When people were happily listening to music on their CD players, they had no idea that these marvels of technology would one day give birth to a music player that was both amazing and controversial. But just as our family sedans sprang from the invention of the wheel, so MP3 players have come from those early music machines.

While MP3s were no doubt in the pipeline for some time, it was the spring of 1998 before they made an appearance with the MPMan of Asia; a similar version arriving in America in summer of the same year. Neither one was all that popular, but later in the same year Diamond Multimedia introduced the Rio PMP300 and sales were a great deal better than expected; enough in fact to cause significant investment in digital music.

Some considered that this device was an aid to the illegal copying of music, but a lawsuit was overturned and digital audio players were ruled to be legal. Hard on the heels of Rio came Compaq's Personal Jukebox (PJB-100), popular due to increased storage space that held 100 CDs. MP3s have since gone from strength to strength with smaller versions like the iPods that hold even more music.

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