How did we get to this point? After several consecutive years of growth and record sales in the United States in 1999, CD sales in the United States and worldwide began to decline. Many industry executives (at least in part) attribute this decline to digital piracy, which began in 1999 with Napster. From 1999 to 2002, worldwide CD sales plummeted 19.8 percent, or about $7.7 billion. (Janssens, Vandaele, & Beken, 2009) MP3 (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) was the most influential technological advancement in the music industry since the creation of the CD in 1982. MP3 allowed users to compress music from CDs in a slightly lower quality format that could easily be transferred over the Internet. The result is that MP3 audio files can be transferred from one user to another without any loss of quality. (Gowan, 2000)This new technology allowed Shawn Fanning to create Napster, the first peer-to-peer music sharing network. Launched in 1999, this service allowed users with Napster software to search for and download music files from other users. The service worked using a central computer server that listed users who owned certain songs and created a bridge between them and other users that allowed them to share files. In December 1999, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster, accusing the company of allowing and encouraging copyright infringement. Within a month of the lawsuit being filed, the number of Napster users grew from 50,000 to over 150,000, and the number of songs available for download grew to over 20 million (Menn, 2003). At its peak, Napster had 70 million registered users. In 2001, the court ordered Napster to block all files that infringed the copyright and, among other things, the artist's traditional development. As for what's next for the recording industry, “Friday” raises debate about some of the unintended consequences the Internet has on music. One of the most complicated problems with the Internet is that there are little to no filters, which allows anyone to upload a song to YouTube, SoundCloud, ITunes, Facebook, blogs, etc. Because of this, standards for music have been significantly lowered. Unfortunately, it would appear that music fans and professionals are being confused and confused by the general public. It's no wonder that the value of music is plummeting when the work of a professional artist, with a team of managers and agents, now seems equivalent to the efforts of anyone with a laptop and a microphone. The "Friday" music video on YouTube currently has 362,222 likes, 1,338,685 dislikes, and 67,689,277 views.