In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 138: 1990s Product Fails; Napster & the Dawn of Music Downloading; Most Dangerous Vehicles Ever; Three Mile Island Disaster(3-27-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 138

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Some of the biggest failures of 1990s products. Some of the most dangerous vehicles ever created. The rise of Napster and the dawn of music downloading in general. The nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island.
Episode 138 of the podcast has warm and fuzzy nostalgia, horrific and scary events, some laughs and some head-shaking all in one show.
It begins with a look back to the bygone days of the 1990s. Some products burst onto the scene and changed the way people lived their lives. This segment will not include any of those. We will kick the show off with the products that came in with major hype only to flame out. These are some of the 1990s biggest product failures.
The 1990s also saw the dawning of music downloading. As the Internet became more easily accessible things that are common today had yet to come into existence. Music downloading legally also led to piracy. The website Napster was at the forefront of this when it debuted in 1999. We will go way Back In the Day to look at both the rise and fall of Napster and the rise of music downloading in general.
Vehicle safety standards have greatly improved over the decades. However, in this week's Top 5, we are going to look at some of the most dangerous vehicles ever to grace the roads. Did you own any of these?
In a new This Week In History and Time Capsule we will get up close and personal with the nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island.
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Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 138. If March came in like a lion, we're having it go out like a lamb with some sweet nostalgia here this episode ending off March. We're going to start it off by talking about some of the biggest product busts of the 1990s. Did you purchase any of these fails? We're going to go way, way back in the day and reminisce about what it was like during the brief but impactful heyday of Napster and the other original music downloads I'll see you next time. Welcome into the show, everybody. We are ending off March strong, filled with tons of nostalgia, like I said. I have just about completely crossed over into the total nostalgia podcast. Comfort food for the Generation X soul. But you don't need to be from Gen X to appreciate everything that's in the show. You've heard what's coming up this week. There's going to be a lot of great stuff in the weeks ahead, so I hope you'll stick with the show, share it, Tell others. That's the big thing. Word of mouth about the podcast, about the content on YouTube, the blogs, etc. That's the biggest way to get more eyes and ears on what I do. Because naturally, I'm going to promote the hell out of my show and my content and say it's great and I believe it's great. But having others say it means even more. A big shout out to my Patreon subscribers, Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, and Ashley. If you want to go and become a Patreon subscriber, there's a link in the description of the podcast. It's patreon.com slash inmyfootstepspodcast. You get access to full bonus episodes of the podcast over on Patreon, early access to YouTube videos, early access to the main podcast show segments I put up there. And I'm sure there'll be more stuff that I add in. I'm still learning exactly what I can and should do as far as things for my Patreon subscribers and things to entice others to come and be subscribers. You may have noticed right there I just said Patreon subscribers. I am stopping doing Buzzsprout bonus content, I guess I would say. If you want to go and become a member over there, you can. But I've noticed I have more success on Patreon, A. And B, I noticed that my bonus episodes I've been creating for Buzzsprout subscribers eats into my monthly allotment of minutes. So basically I have to pay for more minutes to do the actual main show. So I'm essentially losing money to create these memberships that aren't really taking off anyway. So as March ends, Patreon becomes the only place that I will share new content. And speaking of the main podcast, for those of you that don't know, Google Podcasts is going away after, actually after this week. Next week's podcast, I think, will be the first one where Google Podcasts does not have it. They're trying to get you over to YouTube Music. So just a heads up for those of you that listen on Google, after this week's show, you won't be able to because Google Podcasts is going away. We can get into more housekeeping stuff at the end of the podcast. Right now, let's travel back to the 1990s and look at some products that came in with much hype and much fanfare and failed. So let's enjoy some 1990s product busts starting right now. For every product that becomes a staple of daily life, there are Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Very few of them succeed, but a lot of them come out with this hype like it's the next big thing and it just doesn't happen. So that's what we're going to look at now is those ones that came out with a lot of hype, but ultimately failed whether right away or after a couple of years. So these are some of the biggest 1990s product busts. I can tell you I remember almost all of these. There's a couple that I don't remember, but they made me laugh so much that I said I had to include them. And you'll have to let me know if any of these were things that were in your rotation as far as what you had in daily life. First and foremost is one of those era-defining failures, I guess. When you think of 90s product busts, what's the first thing that pops in your head? If you said Crystal Pepsi, you're right on the same wavelength as me. When I was researching this topic, that was the first thing I put down. Crystal Pepsi was what it says. It was a clear soda. And man, it was launched with so much hype in 1992. It had Van Halen's hit song Right Now as part of the advertising campaign. Since it was 30 years ago that it was out, I can't tell you exactly what it tasted like. It was different than what a normal Pepsi would taste like. I just remember that. It was said to be the clear alternative to regular sodas. I mean, clear sodas weren't exactly new. 7-Up, Sprite, Slice. I mean, they're grayish, but they're essentially clear. They're not that dark brown like cola. It came in with a bang, but within a year or so, it was already being parodied on Saturday Night Live, Crystal Gravy. There were also just this swarm of other colorless products, colorless dish soap by Paul Molliv, colorless beer. One of the final straws was the Coca-Cola company creating Tab Clear, they said as a kind of kamikaze product to just torpedo the whole crystal industry. By around the spring of 1994, the final batches of Crystal Pepsi had been delivered and sold or thrown out, and that was it. It was done. Did any of you ever try Coors Spring Water? The idea in and of itself actually makes a little bit of sense with the Coors Brewing Company. Constantly talked about how its beer was brewed with real Rocky Mountain Spring Water. In 1990, they decided to get in on the growing bottled water craze by selling Coors Rocky Mountain Spring Water. It came in glass bottles and it needed an actual bottle opener to open the top of it. But this was another epic fail, epic overreach by a company. When you think of Coors, you think of beer. You don't think of water. So I guess hardcore fans of the Coors brand maybe would try it just to see what Rocky Mountain Spring Water tasted like. Like it's going to be different than any other water. They even tried to give it flavors, lemon, lime, and cherry, an original water flavor. It was quickly discontinued, with few tears shed. That's one of those stay-in-your-lane products. Like when Colgate made frozen entrees. It's like stick-to-toothpaste, so Coors stick-to-beer. Something that was a little bit ahead of its time was the Nintendo Virtual Boy. It

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needs your eyes. This

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came out in 1995, so it was virtual reality. It was a headset, but it was on kind of a tripod that you could put on the table and lean your head in to play games. This was knocked immediately for lack of full-color discomfort of how you had to play it, where your head would be. Reviews said that it made video gaming antisocial because you're locked into this VR headset, and that the virtual reality didn't add anything to the games you were playing. They said it was a novelty. There were only 22 games released for it, and it sold for the price of $179.95 in 1995, which is about $366 when adjusted for inflation to 2024. The Virtual Boy was discontinued about a year later. Most people enjoy fast food, some kind of fast food. It makes you feel like a kid again. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's. But when a place like McDonald's starts to promote food just for adults, ooh, you know that's gonna do well. You remember the Arch Deluxe? The irony with this is that the Arch Deluxe at the time was the biggest budgeted fast food promotional item ever. It's estimated that McDonald's spent over $300 million in 1996 when they started to promote the Arch Deluxe. What made this burger for adults?

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A potato flour sesame seed

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bun. Quarter pound of beef. A circular piece of peppered bacon. Lettuce, tomato, American cheese, a special Dijonais mustard mayo sauce. It was officially released in May 1996, so just as I was getting ready to graduate high school, and even though I was thrilled to be seen as more of an adult as getting out of high school, eating a certain kind of burger from McDonald's did not seem like it was being an adult. The burger was a massive fail. They stuck it on the menu and kept it there until early 2000, but reports at the time said that by mid-1998, McDonald's knew this was going to be a fail, and they just stuck with it, just praying that it would catch on. So I don't want adult food at fast food restaurants. Do you want floating orbs in your soda? Do you remember Orbit Soda? This was made by the Clearly Canadian Company. If you remember Clearly Canadian, I think that's still around. Non-carbonated drink with these little floating bubbles that were colored. They floated with the assistance of something called gel and gum. It looked a little bit like a lava lamp. It was called a texturally enhanced alternative beverage. If you need all those words to describe what you're creating, that should tell you that it's not going to be something that catches on. Much like the Arch Deluxe, Orbit Soda came out in May 1996, so right as I'm graduating high school, I did not go get an Arch Deluxe and then buy an Orbit Soda and sit there and say, wow, the 90s are a wonderful time. It came in six different flavors, but sometime in 1998 it was discontinued. And you can find unopened bottles on eBay. So if you bought some and then didn't drink it, you could make some money off it. Interestingly, there's something around now that I'm sure some of you have heard of called bubble tea. That's kind of similar in theory to what Orbitz soda was. And that's actually pretty popular. So maybe Orbitz was a little bit ahead of its time. A potato chip that's also a laxative. Boy, I'm sure glad I never tried Lay's Wow Chips. These were fat-free chips introduced by the Frito-Lay company. Sometime in 1998, the secret with these was that they contained something called Olestra, a fat substitute. Initially, in its first year, these Lay's Wow Chips, which were everywhere in commercials, they made $400 million in its first year. But the problem is that Olestra, When taken in larger quantities, would cause abdominal cramping, diarrhea, anal leakage. So if you sat down with these wow chips and had more than the stated serving size, they basically turned into a laxative. They even had to start putting warnings on the bags of chips to tell you what was in them. That's a sign right there. If you're like, these are fat-free chips, they're great, but they're made with this thing that's terrible. Like, you should know that's not good. By the second year of these being out, the sales of wow chips had dropped by more than half. They were rebranded to light chips, and they stuck around until the 2010s. But the formula was changed, so it wasn't the original wow chips. Speaking of very 90s products, you remember Zima? It was a clear, lightly carbonated alcoholic beverage, kind of like a wine cooler or a cooler in general, seen as an alternative to beer. This was also made by the Coors Company. This came out in 1993, so after their spring water had failed, they decided to do something more in their wheelhouse containing alcohol. These commercials were everywhere in the early to mid-90s. The cool alternative drink with the young people. Ooh, I'll have a Zima instead of your stupid beer. People tried it, and in its first couple years it was initially relatively popular. But then this drink was routinely made fun of on late night shows with David Letterman, seen as a women's drink. And it died a slow death, finally being discontinued in the United States in 2008. cereal on the go is a good idea. Kellogg's Breakfast Mates might not be that much of a good idea.

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For mornings at your pace, there's new Kellogg's Breakfast Mates with a bowl of your kid's favorite Kellogg's cereal, milk and spoon in one. It's everything you need to make breakfast easier.

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These were single serving cereals that were released in 1998. So Kellogg's brands, Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops, Mini Wheats, Corn Flakes, those types of things. But it also came with a four ounce serving of milk, which required no refrigeration. And this ended up being kind of a confusing product because even though this milk required no refrigeration so you could put it in the cereal aisle, they decided to put this in the refrigerated section of supermarkets. And also having cereal with warm milk that you poured from a little container like that was just weird. This product was such a fail that within a year, by 1999, it was pulled off the shelves and it damaged Kellogg's reputation so much that General Mills leaped over them to become the number one cereal company in the country. Naturally, you want a detergent for your clothes that is the most powerful you can get, but do you want one that's so powerful that it destroys your clothes? That was the story behind Persil Power Detergent. This was released by the Unilever company in the mid-1990s, And they had figured out that most of these detergents out there had similar stain-fighting properties. So there was little to distinguish between them. So they decided to make a brand that would have the strongest stain-fighting property possible. In May 1994, Persil Power was released. There was already a Persil detergent, which many people felt did the job fine. The problem was with this Persil Power... that after a few times of washing your clothes, not only did it strip the color away from the clothes, but then it would also start to eat away at the structural integrity of your clothes. So you'd put on your shirt after washing it a few times in Persil Power, and it would just rip the sleeves off. Within a couple of years, after all of these complaints about what this did to people's clothes, they issued a product recall and shelved Persil Power. And finally, the final 90s product bust is a symbol of luxury and unnecessary that I thought was too funny not to include. And that is thirsty dog or thirsty cat bottled water. So bottled water for your pets. I get it. Those of you that have dogs, cats, you love them. They're your family. They're like your children. And everyone has them now, especially after COVID. But in the 1990s, to buy special bottled water for your animals, man, that's just very unnecessary. This product was released in and discontinued in 1994, so it did not last long. There is not a lot of information out there about this product because it was gone so fast. Although I can tell you the waters were flavored for the animals, so Thirsty Dog was crispy beef flavored. While for the cat it was tangy fish flavored water. Can you imagine being a young person in 1994 after a night out partying and you come home and you need water to kind of sober you up and you open the fridge and grab a bottle of water not knowing what it is and it's fish flavored water. You can just imagine people taking a swig of that and puking all in the fridge. I don't know. That was the funniest one when I saw that. I couldn't believe it was real. But there are pictures of these bottles with like a dog face or cat face on the bottle of water. I would assume most of you out there had never heard of that one, but had you heard of the other 90s product busts, I would think the Crystal Pepsi or Zima or the Arch Deluxe or the Wow Chips would be the ones that you remember the most. The 90s were an awesome time to be alive and growing up, but these products definitely did not age well for us that grew up back then. This week in history, we are going back 45 years ago this week to March 28th, 1979 and the infamous nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island. This incident occurred at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania, and it marked one of the most significant nuclear accidents in history, and it forever altered the perception of nuclear energy and its safety. The disaster itself, the incident... It occurred with a series of mechanical malfunctions and human errors, a combination of equipment failures, design flaws, misinterpretations. These all led to a partial meltdown in one of the plant's reactors. The root cause was a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve. This caused cooling water to drain from the reactor core unnoticed. So as a result, the reactor overheated, and this caused significant damage to its fuel rods. The situation escalated rapidly as plant operators struggled to understand the severity of the problem. There was confusion, miscommunication, and this all plagued the initial response, which then exacerbated the whole crisis. The emergency protocols were not followed precisely, and of course then accurate information about how bad the meltdown was was not immediately available to the public. The immediate impact of the Three Mile Island disaster was, of course, felt most acutely by the surrounding community. There was fear and uncertainty, as there were conflicting reports about the severity of the incident. You know, you hear about a nuclear disaster nearby you, you want to know just how bad it is. There were concerns about radiation exposure. And this prompted widespread evacuations, which were later deemed to be overly cautious. The authorities assured that the radiation releases were minimal and that they posed no immediate health risks, but the psychological damage was done. The trust in the nuclear industry and the government regulators was severely affected, and many of the people in those areas chose to move away permanently. Three Mile Island dealt a severe blow to the nuclear power industry as a whole in the world. Public opinion shifted sharply. There was increased scrutiny of existing plants, slowdown in construction of new ones. There was a massive overhaul in the governing of nuclear power. But then it wasn't that much longer, 1986, that Chernobyl happened. And Chernobyl was worse. So within seven years, you've got Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that really showed the issues with nuclear power and its safety. 45 years after Three Mile Island happened, its legacy is enduring as a reminder of the risks with nuclear power. And there have been technological advancements that have improved reactor safety and emergency preparedness. But there's always that worry about another catastrophic accident. This has sparked a broader conversation about energy production, looking to sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel and renewable energy. Ultimately, Three Mile Island served as a wake-up call for the nuclear industry and society at large. This infamous disaster occurred 45 years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going back 75 years ago this week to March 30th, 1949. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Cruising Down the River by Blue Baron and his orchestra. This song was originally recorded in 1946 and actually came around by someone winning a British songwriting contest. It's been covered numerous times, but the Blue Baron version spent 19 weeks on the Billboard Best Seller chart. This was before the Hot 100, peaking at number one here. The number one movie was Little Women, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 46 cents. This movie starred Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Peter Lawford. It's about the March Sisters. struggling to make ends meet in New England while their father is away fighting in the Civil War. It's adapted from the series of books written by Louisa May Alcott. The film was a modest hit at the box office and is 75% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The book Little Women was assigned reading for most kids growing up in the 80s and 90s in school, so I'm familiar with the story based on the books that I read. The number one TV show was Texaco Star Theater. This is back when that was basically the only show that was on television in 1949. It's been mentioned on the podcast before. Texaco Star Theater was a big radio show from 1938 to 1949 and transitioned over to television from 1948 to 1956. And it was a variety show. When the Texaco sponsorship ran out, it was renamed to the Milton Berle Show in 1953. And if you were around back then, March 30th, 1949, you're going out for a nice family drive, parents, maybe you've got a couple of kids, maybe you've got a kid that needs a car seat, well, you're in luck. We've got a very safe car seat that you can get in the Sears Spring Catalog. There were three different versions of this car seat, each more luxurious with more padding for the child. But it's a seat with little holes for their feet to stick out of. But this seat is basically hung over the main seat of a car. It looks like there are these little hooks that would kind of go over a door. No child safety seat with seat belts and any harnesses to keep them in place. No, this has a little safety belt with it. but the seat is basically draped over the front seat of the car. The low-level seat costs $1.65. The average seat was $2.49, with the luxurious one being $4.79. Child safety was far different in the 1940s. Well, who am I to talk? Even in the 80s, we would sit in the back of the station wagon with no seatbelts, even in the 90s. But that'll wrap up another This Week in History, another Time Capsule. Speaking of safety, it's time now for a brand new top five. This will not be safety. As we look at the top five most dangerous automobiles ever coming up right now. Leave your thoughts about safety at the door with this week's top five. We're going to look at the top five most dangerous automobiles. And I did a fair amount of research to find out exactly why some of these were listed in articles and videos about being so dangerous. There are a few that are going to be immediately recognizable to you. There are going to be a few, especially in the honorable mentions, where you're going to say, really, that's dangerous? Luckily, these are all in the past and all vehicles that are made now are totally safe. Wink. As with these top fives, we have some honorable mentions and the main top five is in no particular order. With the honorable mentions, because I don't want to spend too much time on them because they're not the top five, I'll give you the vehicle and kind of the main reason why they were unsafe. Kind of a quick clip. So some cliff notes here. As we do the honorable mentions for most dangerous automobiles, they include the DeLorean. Gullwing doors, if you're in an accident, you're screwed. The Audi 5000. Specifically, the 1982 to 1987 model's sudden acceleration, causing hundreds of accidents and six deaths. The Hyundai Pony. Poorly and cheaply made with poor suspension, it couldn't handle weather or obstacles well. The Pontiac Fiero, malfunctioning connecting rods would cause these to catch fire, leading to hundreds of complaints and more than a dozen injuries. And finally on the honorable mentions is the Chevrolet Corvair, a rear-mounted engine which caused trouble for people that like to drive as fast as possible. It was famously part of Ralph Nader's book titled Unsafe at Any Speed. That's not a list you want to be on. So those were the honorable mentions for most dangerous automobiles ever. Let's get into the actual top five and see how many of you owned any of these vehicles. Number one is a classic, the Ford Pinto. When you think of dangerous vehicles or failures as vehicles, Ford Pinto is usually at the top of the list with the AMC Pacer or the Gremlin. The Ford Pinto had its fuel tank in the back. So the idea here is that if you get rear-ended in an accident, you're probably going to explode and blow up the car that rear-ended you too. There's a movie that I loved as a kid, and it's still great, called Top Secret. It was one of Val Kilmer's first movies ever. It came out in 1984, but there's a scene with a Ford Pinto where a car comes up behind it and touches it gently and it just explodes. The Ford Pinto also had issues with its drum brakes and suspension in general, but the main issue is the fuel tank in the back and worrying about exploding. The Pinto was a 70s car. It was on the market from 1971 to 1980 and is now obviously a punchline used in top fives like this. Number two is the Yugo GV. GV stood for great value. Yeah, sure. The Yugo GV first made its debut in America in 1987. And there were immediate jokes about how cheap it was and how cheaply it was made. The original sticker price for this was $3,990. When adjusted for inflation to 2024, that's just under $11,000 now. I haven't had to buy a car in a decade, so I don't know if $11,000 for a car would get you anything. The cheap issues with the Yugo included having to replace the timing belt roughly every 40,000 miles. Otherwise, the engine would just seize up. But the main thing with its cheap quality of how it was made was, God help you, if you got in an accident, you'd probably be safer having a cardboard box on the highway than a Yugo GV. Another fun fact is that there are other brands of the Yugo cars that have landed on worst cars ever lists, but the GV is the one I wanted to share with you. Number three is the Reliant Regal. This is a British-made vehicle, and if you've never heard of it, if you look at a photo of it, it's three wheels. So that should tell you immediately why it's dangerous. This thing looks like it was made by someone that had no idea how to make a car. Like if I made one. It's like the Homer Simpson one when he gets to make his own vehicle. That's in season two of The Simpsons. Fans of the Mr. Bean TV show might remember a Reliant Regal, a blue car, being kind of the main antagonist of the show. The vehicle was actually made from 1952 to 1973. Standard models didn't even have a radio. The body was made of fiberglass. So you think of that, three wheels and fiberglass. You're gonna take a corner with three wheels and tip over. So that was the main thing with the Reliant Regal. Don't drive fast. Don't take any corners. Just don't get it. Buy it and have it in your backyard as a part of a clubhouse. Number four is the BMW Isetta. If you've never heard of this vehicle, pause this podcast and Google BMW Isetta. It's literally like a shoebox with a windshield. It was great on gas. It could get 78 miles per gallon. It was first produced in 1955, and it's got the nickname the Bubble Car. It definitely looks like more of a novelty. If you've ever seen the smart cars that look like they're the smallest car you could find, cut that in half, and that's the Isetta. I could only imagine trying to get this car up to 40 miles an hour, or being on any sort of highway. This vehicle was produced from 1955 to 62. It had 10-inch tires. So barely bigger than a fat tire bicycle. And it could go from zero to 30 in 11 seconds. I think if I was on a bike, I could get to zero to 30 in faster than 11 seconds. Yes, that micro car didn't last long. The bubble on the bubble car burst. There's a dad joke for you. And I have no kids. And finally, number five on the top five most dangerous automobiles ever is the Ford Explorer. There have been numerous recalls for this SUV over the decades. The main issue with this vehicle is the propensity to roll over in a strong wind or taking a sharp turn. The rollovers were specifically dangerous during the 1990s, where, based on data collected, more than 200 people would die in rollover crashes between 1990 and 2001. It was estimated that roughly one in every 2,700 Ford Explorers would roll over and kill the occupant inside. And there are other issues that came up with the tires. In general, it seems even now there are safety issues with Ford Explorers. And don't get me wrong, SUVs are cool, I wouldn't mind having one again. Just not a Ford Explorer. That'll wrap up another Top 5... Hopefully you never had one of these dangerous vehicles. Hopefully if you're out in your car now, it's a safe one. And after the podcast, if you're going to play some music, hopefully, wink wink, you got it legally. But if not, we're going to go way, way back in the day and look now at what it was like when Napster first came on the scene. So let's go into that. As I started to put together my research for this back in the day segment, it got me wondering, because we're going to talk about music piracy and Napster. Would you people who grew up in the 80s and 90s, specifically the 90s, consider mix CDs to be almost a form of piracy? And what I mean is you make these mix CDs for other people and they likely don't have any of those songs, but now they do and they didn't pay for them. I mean, I don't care, but it's one of those where I hadn't even thought of it in that way. Is a friend pirate still a pirate? Oh, Napster. Brief, but very impactful. Those of you that grew up back then in the 90s, think about that when the internet first started really becoming available in 95, 96. What did you do for music? Downloading music really wasn't a thing. During that time, it was still CDs you had to buy. And sure, it became easier to make mix CDs, burn your own CDs to play in your vehicle. But the idea of getting a song off of the internet was really a foreign concept to me in the late 90s. And then in 1999, Napster came around. So this was founded by two men, Sean Fanning and Sean Parker, who were college students. They're roughly the same age as me. Napster was one of the original P2P sites, peer-to-peer, where you could share music, other files, movies. But I guess the difference is, instead of making a mixed CD for one person, you were kind of making a mixed CD for thousands of people, depending on how many people were on the site. Napster quickly gained popularity from its release in June 1999. as a platform where you could share your music, but then you could also share other people's music without authorization, copyrighted files. I was a little late to the party when it came to Napster. I think mainly because the idea of MP3 music seemed like it wasn't practical. For example, back then in the late 1990s, if you were to put your CD into the modem, the big old modem of a gateway computer like I had, if you were to try to make a copy of one of the songs on a CD, on average, a four-minute song was 42 megabytes. So it wouldn't even fit in a traditional email. But then to top it all off, it would take roughly three and a half hours to download. And how many people in the late 90s, if you had dial-up modems, had three and a half hours of uninterrupted time to upload one song? So to me, it was still buying CDs. I'd much rather plunk down the $15, $16 and just have it rather than trying to get a file offline and then not even being sure if the quality of it was any good. Because I'm sure those of you that downloaded music back then, or even still now, if you went and got it illegally, you were taking a risk of a virus, which that was pretty common, or spending all that time to download one song and then it would sound like it was coming out of a paper towel tube. Within months of Napster coming out, there were millions of users. But of course, it didn't take long for musicians and people that weren't into music piracy to figure out what was going on. And there were immediate legal challenges due to the copyright infringement. It's like I could kind of justify if you really liked a song and didn't have the money to buy a full CD, I guess. But it's sort of like if you've got millions of people that have that same quote-unquote issue, then you've got problems where these musicians that put all their work into their art form aren't seeing the profits from it. Within a year, there were several major music labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, all filed lawsuits against Napster. By July of 2000, a federal judge had issued a preliminary injunction against Napster, ordering the company to remove all copyrighted material from its platform. So that's 13 months after its launch. In July 2001, Napster was shut down temporarily, and later tried to relaunch as a paid subscription service, but that, you know... If you give something away for free for months and months and months, and then you ask for money for it, that's not going to go over well. And even by this point, mid-2001, there were ways to make MP3s more accessible, compression, so that you could get your MP3 from 40-something megabytes down to, like, four. Although you would lose some quality, but you kind of had to find that sweet spot I can say that I never went to Napster and downloaded any music, but I'm no angel, and I will tell you that Napster, even though it kind of got squashed within a few years, it opened the door. The idea of the piracy, the P2P sharing sites, that became more readily available, readily accessible, and you get one, and then the imitators come. I'm sure that some of you out there, as we get now into people that started getting on the internet in the early 2000s, you remember Kaza, or maybe you remember LimeWire. Kaza came out in the ashes of Napster. Same idea, P2P file sharing, music, videos, software. So if you didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars for Microsoft Windows or something like that, you look for it on Kaza. The problem with that would be sometimes you would download software and it would need the serial number, which you then didn't have, so it was useless. Or you spend all that time downloading some kind of software, click it open, and there's a virus to just blow your computer up. Kaza was one I definitely visited several times, but it was always with caution. Because until probably 2005, I didn't have my own computer. Until I bought my first laptop. So if I was downloading music onto someone else's computer and I gave them a virus, it's like, thanks. LimeWire became huge in the mid-2000s. Again, same idea. Music, videos, other files you could send. Much like Kaza, much like Napster. They had the legal challenges from the music industry. LimeWire got shut down in 2000. Kaza got shut down a few years earlier than that. But like I said a minute ago, Napster kind of set the blueprint where now other coders who have the time and the skill can create their own P2P file sharing site. And some of these are like spiderwebs where you shut down one of them And then there's all these other ones that are little offshoots of it. Napster was the OG, though. It is said that it had the fastest growth of any digital service in history, with its peak having 80 million users. And remember, it was shut down within two years. But when you've got heavy hitters in the music industry like Metallica, Dr. Dre, the Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, all coming after you, you're probably not going to win that. For the music industry, in 2003, Apple came out with the iTunes Store to go along with the iPod, which, I mean, that revolutionized music right there in a legal way. I enjoyed it because it made songs more readily available. You didn't have to go buy either a whole album or the CD single or ca-singles, the cassette singles. which were such a huge waste of money. CD singles or those cuss singles, they were like half the price of a regular album. You're getting one song, maybe two, and you're paying half as much as you would for a full album. It just didn't make sense. So the songs on Apple iTunes, I think they were originally 99 cents. Now they're 129 for each song. And today, now everything is streaming. Pandora, Spotify. where you don't even have to pay for music. There's free services that you can just listen. I mean, granted, you're at the mercy of the stations you choose on Pandora, but you can make your own playlists on Spotify. It's amazing to think how in 25 years, how different music as far as digital goes or has become from the days of trying to download these... giant files for one short song that would take hours and could be corrupted with viruses, to being able to listen to pretty much any song you want ever on Spotify. I can think of a song I want right now and go type it into Spotify and listen to it. There's no waiting. Or I could go download it from iTunes and get a high quality version of the song that's not super big. But did any of you out there use Napster, specifically when it was the illegal pirating website? As a kid in college, it definitely was appealing to kind of save money, I guess, on songs. Now that I'm older, it's more like, just pay the $1.29. I guess I was young and rebellious in my early 20s. And in the future, I may do kind of a part two to this where I look deeper into the sites that came after Napster, or maybe a little bit more about the fun of trying to download files during the late 90s. Right now, I'm going to go over to Spotify and just play whatever song I want right now and not have to worry about viruses. Until next time, though, this will wrap up episode 138 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you to everyone who's been tuning in, all of you that share the podcast, that check out the YouTube videos. Content creation in general is a labor of love. It's a lot of work with very little guarantee of any success. I figured it out recently that I likely put in at least 20 hours of work towards content creation every week in addition to my day job. I do it because I love it. I do it because I love the freedom, the creativity. I mean, this podcast can be anything I want it to be. Granted, if I make it very, very particular niche subjects, no one's going to listen. I figure 70s, 80s, 90s nostalgia, that stuff, a lot of people enjoy it. And I hope you've been enjoying it too. It'll continue next week with episode 139, the first in the month of April. We're going to have a laugh as we look back at what it was like to get family portraits or just individual portraits at Sears. I have several of those that are a nice slice of life and also pretty embarrassing. We're going to go way, way back in the day as I review an old country buffet training video from the early 90s and then give some of my stories and experiences from visiting old country buffet. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five companies slash businesses that went out of business in the 80s. Some heavy hitters went under back then. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule coming up next week on episode 139 of the In My Footsteps podcast. If you enjoy my work... You can become a Patreon subscriber. I've mentioned it at the top of the show. There's a link in the description of the podcast, but it's patreon.com slash inmyfootstepspodcast. The newest subscriber-only podcast episode will go up before the next podcast episode goes live, April 1st. I review my initial impressions blog when I wrote it from 2010 to 2012. I've started it back up so you can all get a glimpse into the randomness that is my life. At some point, I may turn those blogs into kind of a weekly wrap-up video podcast on YouTube. It's a matter of sitting down and doing it. And with, like I said, how much time I spend on content creation and my day job, there's no timetable on it. I wanted to take a minute to shout out My cousins, Patrick and Ryan, who both have birthdays this week. Depending on when you hear this, Patrick's likely just passed. Ryan's is in a few days. So I hope you both have or had happy birthdays. Spring is in the air. The weather's getting better. I mean, it's still Cape Cod in the spring. We're talking about upper 40s and clouds and drizzle a lot of the time. So continue to lean into the things that make you happy. Take care of your mental health. As everything gets in bloom, it'll be easier to just be outside and just enjoy that weather. And you can take the podcast with you. I keep these manageable, typically around 50 minutes. Somebody out there needs to take this podcast and go for a walk and see how far you get in the time it takes me to run my mouth. I would say almost three miles if you're walking slow. Don't forget to find me all over social media. You can visit my homepage, ChristopherSetterlin.com. Visit TheLadyOfTheDunes.com, which is a site that I built with my own two hands. That's all about the Lady of the Dunes murder case 50 years ago this year. My book, Searching for the Lady of the Dunes. frank durant's amazing documentary about the case that basically started all of that all my inclusion in this case is thanks to frank and putting his faith in me as a writer and if you want to laugh to wrap up this episode i recently did my taxes and as a writer with nine books out i don't make enough money to do it as my only job yet hopefully I don't make enough money to buy my own house or buy a fancy car, but I do make enough money as a writer that I don't get tax refunds anymore. I need to pay taxes. Just enough to say, yay, you're a writer, but not enough to do anything with it. Thank you all for tuning in to episode 138. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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