Tagged “2000s”

Boy Band Mania: The Total Pop Takeover of the Late 90s

For a few years at the turn of the millennium, five-part harmonies and synchronised choreography weren't just popular — they were close to the entire pop landscape.

Music & Audio

The iPod Click Wheel: When Your Whole Music Library Fit In Your Pocket

A thousand songs in your pocket sounded like marketing hyperbole in 2001. It wasn't, and the little scroll wheel that let you get to any of them in seconds changed what carrying music around actually meant.

Music & Audio

Burning CDs and Using LimeWire: How We Downloaded Music in the Early 2000s

Before streaming, downloading music meant burning CDs from LimeWire and other file-sharing programs that followed Napster's shutdown — the messy, spyware-riddled way a generation got its music in the early 2000s.

Gaming

LAN Parties: Hauling Your PC Over for an All-Night Deathmatch

Before online multiplayer just worked, getting a real match together meant unplugging your entire computer and physically carrying it to someone else's house.

Technology

AIM: The Away Message Was the First Status Update

Before social media taught us to broadcast our feelings to everyone at once, AOL Instant Messenger taught a generation to do it through a carefully curated away message.

Video & TV

TRL: When MTV Made the Whole Country Vote on Music Every Afternoon

Total Request Live turned a countdown show into a daily ritual, a launchpad for pop's biggest stars, and the last great collective music moment before the internet fragmented everything.

Music & Audio

Napster: The Eighteen Months That Broke the Music Industry

A college dropout's dorm-room program let an entire generation download any song ever recorded for free — and nothing about music has been the same since.