I guess that’s true if you define the “modern era” as “starting with Spotify”.
I vividly remember being blown away by their product when it came to market. I remember because I had never seen anything like it and literally didn't believe it could be done at that time. I was waiting for a train and could just search for any song and play it right away from my phone, no downloading, no waiting, just instant music. I was very sceptical beforehand but was instantly sold.
Did I miss another service that did something even remotely similar before Spotify did it?
Myspace was a popular way to share music, if limited.
Youtube, again though this doesn't fully fit the definition.
Anybody know about soundcloud? I know I was using that before I heard of spotify but I'm not sure if it came out beforehand.
Myspace def. was limited and didn't have full catalogs of all music in any scope approaching Spotify.
Youtube is video that has music, and can't be conveniently used on mobile or used for music discovery explicitly.
Soundcloud is actually the closest to what I meant, but it obviously isn't used for record-label music distribution en masse.
