It seems harmless now, but at the time, the article meant war. “I Never Owned Any Music to Begin With,” read the headline of the 2012 NPR blog post, written by Emily White, then a 20-year-old intern at the public radio institution.
White, an obsessive music fan who had cultivated a substantial digital library through less-than-legal means, had started working on the essay before her internship started, and arrived at the NPR offices in Washington, D.C., with a draft in hand. Floating along in the unsteady musical landscape following the Napster era, White felt compelled to share the vision she saw in front of her: The future was streaming, and it was cheap. In other words, the writing was on the wall, and the CDs were piling up in the trash. For the vast majority of listeners, the days of purchasing individual albums were over, like it or not.