Now, digital distribution has changed everything — and a once fanciful concept "the celestial jukebox" has come to be.
Along the way one of the biggest bands in the world sued a start-up software company, saying it encouraged piracy by empowering users to trade copyrighted songs through its servers.
Metallica filed a lawsuit against file-sharing application Napster in the United States District Court on April 13, 2000.
Rapper Dr Dre followed suit and the musicians won.
Napster was forced to shut down the following year.
The issue showed the music industry viewed internet piracy as a serious threat. It highlighted musicians fighting to be paid for their work.
But it also showed how music would soon come to be consumed — and it showed how easily in the digital-age listeners could find new artists.
"We think that when music transitions to digital distribution, people will pay to receive music to their cellphones or their portable devices, to however music is pumped or piped into the home digitally — that will be monetised and artists and labels will be able to make money off of that."
Those were the prescient words of Napster co-founder Sean Parker on MTV News in 2000.
"And people are going to pay for that," he said.
The only problem was, at the time, the file-sharing company he started with then-19-year-old computer programmer Shawn Fanning was outside the law.
Using their peer-to-peer file-sharing system, Napster account holders could conduct searches for music files on the hard drives of millions of other anonymous users for free.
The BBC reported record label A&M filed the first lawsuit against Napster. Soon after Metallica discovered a demo version of their unreleased song I Disappear circulating on the internet and quickly learned about the file-sharing system.
When Metallica sued Napster for copyright infringement to the tune of $10 million — or $100,000 per downloaded song — it captured the world’s attention.
Reuters reported in July 2000 United States District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued a preliminary injunction at the request of the Recording Industry Association of America. Judge Patel said millions of Napster users were committing copyright infringement by trading songs over the internet.
And it was all enabled by Napster.
She later found that although Napster had been started as a way for Mr Fanning to swap music with his college room-mates, it was never a not-for-profit venture.
In 2000 Napster was not making any money — but it was worth millions. It planned to "monetise" its user base once it had grown to a significant size.
Napster might start to charge fees for a "premium" offering, the judge said.
Instead, in 2002, Napster filed for bankruptcy, the BBC said.
Digital music providers nevertheless followed in its footsteps.
Napster paved the way, first, for iTunes and then for streaming services such as YouTube and Spotify, which have come to embody that celestial jukebox.
"The whole thing was about one thing and one thing only — control," he said.
"Not about the internet, not about money, not about file sharing, not about giving s ... away for free or not, but about whose choice it was.
"If I wanna give my s ... away for free, I’ll give it away for free.
"That choice was taken away from me."
The BBC noted five years ago, either through subscription, advertising or licensing today’s digital music distribution services gave money back to the music labels.
The music industry’s revenue was rising again, it said, but it was still only half of its 1999 peak.
