On the day that Roger Waters organised his seminal concert in Berlin, here are three other events that shaped music history since then
The crowd waits for the musicians to come on stage during The Wall concert in Berlin in 1990. Pic courtesy/Getty Images
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Napster stabbed a knife through the heart of the burgeoning CD industry when the music-sharing website launched in 1999. It was a short-lived venture, but signalled a lasting change in music consumption patterns. Copyright-infringement laws eventually pulled it down. Later, sites like Limewire didn’t survive long either. But the direction they took led to the streaming platforms that are par for the course these days. And CDs never stood a real chance again.
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A flickering fame
Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in 1997 was a bolt from the blue. People across the world were shocked, and few more so than Sir Elton John, a close friend of the departed royal’s. He wanted to pay a personal tribute to her in the form of a song called Candle in the Wind, which he’d originally sang in 1973 as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe. John rewrote some of the words keeping Diana in mind and performed it at her funeral. The version became the highest-selling single ever in the UK, and the second-highest worldwide.
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Psy-ched out
Other countries can take a leaf out of South Korea’s books when it comes to peddling soft power. The government there has been steadily pushing films, TV shows and music since the 1990s to spread its influence around the world. The effort eventually came to spectacular fruition with Gangnam Style, pop star Psy’s monster hit from 2013. This writer remembers hearing it for the first time in Edinburgh in a room that was filled with a cosmopolitan mix of Indian, French, Icelandic and Scottish people, all of whom were familiar with the track. An example of how far its popularity had spread.
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Spin this
All these seminal moments have had a direct impact on the music industry, and Vinyl is a web show that reveals the world behind it. Its creators include Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese. The soundtrack has punk music that can fit into a vandalism scene.
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