What was the first song played on the internet?
The first few years of the internet were much slower to take off compared to the bustling networks of communities it is today. Even innovators like Brian Eno weren’t exactly sold at first. This was mainly because, for one, it was seen more as a business-oriented tool than a commercial explosion and also didn’t seem to have the infrastructure to support creative industries, especially considering its basic usability was so frustrating.
When we think of the internet today, it’s usually followed by a confusing mix of positive and negative. While many facets are positive, like allowing us to connect quicker with the people we love, others are undeniably troublesome, like the constant perpetuation of misinformation, political scaremongering, and negative fostering of parasocial relationships.
However, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the internet was more akin to something you’d find in a hardware store, with few people understanding what it actually meant and how it worked. After all, its invention spawned from something entirely practical, starting out as a means of streamlining computer communications processes for governments.
Incidentally, a lot of this centred around protection, with the internet representing some kind of failsafe among government and business organisations so that data and communications remained easily sharable without leaking out into the public domain. While that seems relatively contradictory considering the rate at which the world experiences current leaks and hacks, it was all about centralising communications in a way that felt safe and easy.
So, what was the first song on the internet?
Towards the latter part of the 1990s, more people were buying into the concept as a commercial tool, with musicians like David Bowie leading the way regarding artistic expression and audience engagement. These early innovations paved the way for what we now understand and appreciate about social media platforms, where songs, content, and other facets of fandom culture can be shared and discussed in a matter of moments.
Despite this, and before even Bowie’s stint in 1998 onwards, the first downloadable songs started circulating a few years prior, though the first to do so remains indistinct. However, most regard Aerosmith’s ‘Head First’ to be the first, which was uploaded and offered as a downloadable file in 1994. However, the only catch was that it took far longer than buying a physical copy, with some users having to wait up to 90 minutes to actually be able to play the song.
That said, the many ways the internet could host new or old material became clear over the years that followed, not just in terms of virality but mystery and intrigue, too. After all, the so-called “most mysterious song on the internet”, ‘Subways of Your Mind’, seemingly cropped up out of nowhere sometime around 2009, despite its initial recording in 1983. Therefore, the internet wasn’t just suddenly a tool for real-time sharing and communication but a great unknown and a repository for forgotten lore.
