How changing methods of discovering and acquiring music by consumers present financial and creative challenges to artists, labels and publishers. With the internet now easily available all over the globe, the music industry is no longer the same as it was 20 years ago. If you wanted to get the latest album or single you would've had to go to a shop that sold it, depending whether or not it was in stock. Same would apply if you wanted an older album, with the chosen shop choosing it's selection of music based on it's location. You wouldn't really tend to find music from Ukraine, Paraguay or Mongolia in your local HMV. Same goes for the more obscure, rare or out of print albums. With the development of the mp3 format file, which compressed the sample rate and quality of songs, it meant you could squeeze and a 40 minute album worth of music into 40 megabytes. This meant however the sound quality would be inferior to the original, but the mass majority of people wouldn't tell the difference unless they had knowledge of sample rates to begin with. Whereas a CD would be 700mb for 80 minutes, this meant it was quicker to upload and download these smaller files, especially in a pre broadband internet connection. With this, people could share music easier and quicker. This is where peer to peer sharing came into place.
The program Napster allowed people to upload their music collection in an mp3 format, allowing other people to download them if they searched for it. Of course not everyone had access to the internet or even the know how to illegally download music. Which meant people could download an album to their computer, burn it onto a recordable CD and sell them to people for a much cheaper price than the high street recommended retail price. They could even find the album artwork to print off and place in a CD case and make it look legit, rather than a disc in plastic slip. Another way this could be achieved would be to copy an actual bought album using a CD burner on a computer.