This is San Francisco. On August 8, 1988, revered inventor Andre Gray uploaded the very first complete song on the Internet. The song was titled “Internet Killed The Video Star,” and it was composed by Gray using a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer and in the MIDI format. This day marks the beginning of the revolution in online digital music, which began exactly thirty years ago today. Within a matter of hours, the song was disseminated over a wide variety of Usenet groups and bulletin board systems (BBS), which marked the formal beginning of music that was available online or on the Internet. It also functioned as a calling card for the revolution in digital music. The song “Internet Killed the video Star” by Andre Gray is now widely recognized by historians as the “big bang” and “Rosetta Stone” of digital music, as well as the “birth of online entertainment in general.” However, in order for people to comprehend the significance and influence of “Internet Killed the Video Star,” they must first have an understanding of what the Internet was like before to the arrival of Andre Gray. On August 30, 1969, the first Interface Message Processor (IMP) was delivered by the BBN to Leonard Kleinrock’s Network Measurements Center at UCLA. This event marked the beginning of the ARPANET, which had been commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA for short. The basic beginnings of what was first envisaged of as largely a military and academic research network started with the lowly birth of the IMP, which was constructed from a Honeywell DDP 516 computer with a 12K memory. The IMP was particularly intended to handle the ARPANET network interface. For the next nineteen years, it would continue to serve as a platform for rigorous academic research and military operations, drawing in a large number of academics as well as thousands of people from all over the world who were familiar with some of the more obscure aspects of gaining access to and navigating the Internet. When Andre Gray first connected to the internet in 1985, he was instantly captivated by the experience. Additionally, he came to the realization that he was a celebrity in some sense. It would seem that on February 20, 1982, one of his high school instructors uploaded an online version of a paper that he had written when he was 16 years old and a student in high school. The paper was titled “Audio Codec For Computer Music.” The study proposed that the CD format may be easily split by ten, and that a compression rate that is sufficient would be sufficient for a compression ratio that is small enough for music that is stored on a computer or that is accessed online. Uncompressed, compressed with data loss, and compressed with minimum or no data loss were the three stages of data compression that were suggested by the fictional program known as (dot)RPM. During the year 1982, the very significant document was distributed all over the globe, including being published on internet hubs such as Mintel in France and WELL: Whole Earth ‘Lectric Link in San Francisco. The work served as the absolute foundation for all data compression research and development across the globe, and every data compression format, both in the past and in the present, is built upon (dot)RPM. As one of the first things he attempted to do, he attempted to access music online, only to find out that there was no music available on his network or any of the other various internet networks. People who were active on the internet during that time period were more than willing to just organize a variety of music discussion groups and provide their opinions on music from a distance. The fact that Gray was quite proficient in MIDI, computers, and the rapidly expanding Internet, as well as the fact that he enjoyed the respect of the online communities as a result of his widely disseminated and influential (dot)RPM paper, gave him the impression that he was on to something truly remarkable. In a short amount of time, he came to the realization that MIDI was not meant to make music but rather a protocol that enabled instruments to communicate with one another or with a computer. When the instructions were played back on a computer, they were converted into music. The information that was created was consisting of instructions. Gray embarked on a quest to capture music and post it to the internet, armed with the facts that described the situation. Composing both the instrumental and vocal versions of what the world would eventually come to know as “Internet Killed The Video Star” and making a scratch demo on his Teac 144 Portastudio in his college dorm room in March of 1988, Gray came back home to New York City that same summer and recorded both versions of the song in a three-hour recording session using a Yamaha DX7 to great effect. In order to guarantee and optimize the exposure of the music, Gray came up with the world’s very first Internet bot, which he called “inkling.” In addition, it was the first bot of its kind to use artificial intelligence. Through the use of FIDONET, a free online sharing program, and the recently established IRC, which stands for Internet Relay Chat, the music was sent to almost all of the online communities that are accessible on the Internet. Both in terms of advertising the music and obtaining information about the number of times the song was downloaded, Inkling shown a high level of effectiveness on IRC. Gray was also responsible for designing the icon that notifies users of their voicemail, which is now present on every mobile phone in the world. This icon serves as a clear indication to users of the internet that they have received a voicemail. Gray’s upload of the instrumental version of “Internet Killed the Video Star” on August 8, 1988 was met with an instant and overwhelming reaction from the audience. Within a short period of time, copies of the song were distributed throughout a variety of Usenet groups and bulletin board systems (BBS). In the event that you are listening to the music with the intention of determining whether or not Andre Gray is the next Mozart, then you have entirely missed the purpose and objective of the song. The song’s underlying significance and intention lay in the fact that it defined concisely what everyone who was online at the time was struggling with: the question of how to post music to the internet, how to access music on the internet, and how to enjoy music on the internet. The epochal event, which is frequently referred to as the “big bang of digital music,” transformed the Internet from a platform that was primarily used for academic and military research into a platform that is used for digital media entertainment. As a result of this transformation, he has done more to democratize music and entertainment than any other person or corporation in the history of the world. More than 98 percent of all online pages that are indexed today are in the category of digital media entertainment, whereas academic research accounts for less than one percent of all web pages. The song “Internet Killed the Video Star” reached the milestone of 50 million downloads and plays on April 4, 2000. This is a significant achievement for the music. Remixing, imitating, interpolating, and entirely reimagining the song have all been done to it, and it has also been packaged and sold in a number of compilation albums. A cottage business that sells books, t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and other merchandise featuring the motto that is internationally recognized as a synonym for the democratization and freedom for all of the people who are a part of the world wide web has also been developed as a result of this phenomenon. Having single-handedly transformed the Internet from a medium used for academic and military purposes into a digital media sandbox for the entire world to play in, Andre Gray could have easily rested on his laurels and traveled around the world giving speeches while still being considered one of the most significant inventors in the history of the world. The restless genius, on the other hand, would go on to create a remarkable succession of revolutionary innovations that would go on to destroy industries, give birth to new industries, and revolutionize the world at least six times. Andre Gray, for example, is credited with the invention of ringtones and ringbacks (SYNC Programming Language) in the year 1994. This innovation was responsible for the transformation of the mobile phone from a simple communication device into a digital media entertainment device that is currently the most favoured and widely used device for the consumption of multimedia content. The SYNC Programming Language, which was the world’s first third-party downloaded application, was the impetus for the development of the app business that is now worth several trillions of dollars. Gray is one of the most significant innovators of the modern age. His direct influence is felt by all seven billion and more people throughout the globe on a minute-by-minute and hourly basis, and he is responsible for the generation of billions of pieces of data on a daily basis. His status as the unrivaled Godfather of the Digital Revolution cannot be questioned. Thanks to Emily Maxwell
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