In 1997, a nineteen-year-old college dropout named Justin Frankel released a software program called Winamp, which allowed users to easily organize and play MP3s on computers. Winamp was downloaded by more than 25 million eager MP3 devotees, and Nullsoft, Winamp’s parent company (which Frankel had formed with the Internet Underground Music Archive’s Rob Lord), was sold to AOL in 1999 for around $100 million.
