Digital Download, 20 Years Ago

This is super cool. I came across a website yesterday called Noisey, Music By Vice. On June 27, Devin Schiff wrote a post about the first digital download. Here's an excerpt (the bold parts are my emphasis):

"Twenty years ago, on June 27, 1994, Geffen Records made history when it released the first major label song for exclusive digital download. The song was Aerosmith’s 'Head First,' an unused cut from the Get a Grip sessions. Ten thousand CompuServe subscribers downloaded it in eight days. It is three minutes and 14 seconds long. It took 60 to 90 minutes to download. “Head First” was a trial, a marketing ploy, a flash of the future, an iceberg for a titanic industry, and 4.3 megabytes of riffs and double entendres, available as a WAV file."

And also these nuggets:

"The song was made available to CompuServe’s 2 million users on June 27. Steven Tyler had the money quote in the press release: 'If our fans are out there driving down that information superhighway,' he said, 'then we want to be playing at the truck stop.' Users could access it through a line command, by typing “GO AEROSMITH.” Downloads took 60 to 90 minutes, depending on whether the user had a 9,600 bps modem connection or 14.4 kbps, lightning quick by comparison. There were worries about the servers crashing, but everything went smoothly."

The  New York Times covered the song release as well. Neil Strauss wrote the article, and you'll know his name because he wrote Motley Crue's biography, The Dirt. From the New York Times piece (again, my bold):

"At stake may be nothing less than the future of the record business. If songs are available free through a computer's phone line, this leaves record labels, manufacturers and retailers out in the cold. The current state of technology makes it impractical in terms of time and computer storage space to download an entire CD, but several computer companies are working to remedy the matter. More urgent is the matter of copyright. On the vast information network known as Internet, music fans have been making songs by popular acts available free for some time. Several major recording labels are in the process of deciding whether they will lobby for copyright protection on Internet."

I was in eighth grade when this marketing opportunity went down. At that time, Aerosmith was easily the biggest thing in my life - but I didn't have a computer, let alone a CompuServe account, so I didn't know any of this cool history. I'll go out on a limb here and assume at least a couple BBG! regulars downloaded the Aerosmith track 20 years ago.