2000 in Music

Fourteen billion dollars and a ticking clock The American recording industry hits $14.6 billion in revenue, its all-time peak, with CD shipments alone worth $13.2 billion. A boy band's third album sells 2.4 million copies in a single week, doubling the previous record. A teen pop star's second album moves 1.3 million in its first week, the highest debut by a female artist ever measured. The numbers have never been bigger. They will never be this big again.

Eighty million accounts The file-sharing application launched by a college dropout the previous summer now has 20 million active users downloading 14,000 songs per minute. On college campuses, MP3 transfers account for up to 61 percent of all external network traffic. In April, a heavy metal band discovers a demo recorded for a film soundtrack circulating on the platform before it has been officially released. The band's drummer delivers thirteen boxes containing 335,435 usernames to the company's headquarters, demanding they be blocked. The lawsuits pile up. The service keeps growing.

The studio Hendrix built Three albums recorded in overlapping sessions at the same Manhattan studio, on the same vintage analog equipment, by an overlapping circle of musicians, define the year's most critically acclaimed movement. The singer on the first release, out in January, worked with a drummer who served as his co-pilot, recording 85 percent of the album live to two-inch tape with no copying or pasting. The second, released in March, was built primarily by a producer from Detroit who looped and chopped samples with a warmth that made digital tools sound handmade. The third, arriving in November, was composed spontaneously while recording, music first and lyrics second. The engineer on all three insisted on using ribbon microphones and tube preamps from the 1960s, capturing sounds in a room where the equipment had not changed in thirty years.

The computer crashes the guitar A British band's fourth album, released in October with no singles, no videos, and no promotion, abandons guitar rock almost entirely. The singer, who had suffered severe depression and writer's block after years of touring, recovered by making drawings inspired by walks along the coast and refusing to touch an instrument. When music returned, it came through a Fender Rhodes, a vintage synthesizer, and software the guitarist was still learning to use. The album debuted at number one in both the UK and the US, proving that a band could delete its own formula and still command an audience.

A studio named after a smell A duo from Atlanta purchases a studio near Northside Drive, the same building where they first recorded vocals together on a remix eight years earlier. They name it after a portmanteau of slang for funky and a poster of a futuristic city in one member's bedroom. With no studio clock ticking, they visit local clubs, recruit performers they find on the spot, and bring them back to record. One single runs at 155 beats per minute, fusing drum and bass rhythms with a gospel choir and Southern rap over a track so frantic it barely holds together. Another becomes their first number one on the pop chart.

Two months in Michigan A rapper records his third album over a compressed two-month creative binge, sessions often running twenty hours straight, in a studio in suburban Detroit. The production toggles between the polished West Coast sound of one collaborator and the rawer, sample-driven approach of two brothers who run the local facility. The finished record sells 1.78 million copies in its first week, setting the record for fastest-selling solo album. A Senate hearing, protests from advocacy groups, and attempted entry bans from foreign governments only amplify the attention.

Hanging drywall before tracking A band arrives at a newly assembled studio in Chicago to begin recording its major-label debut and discovers the building is not finished. Band members help hang drywall before sessions can begin. The producer is working in the space for the first time. The frontman, who has never used recording software, teaches himself Pro Tools during mixing. The finished album sounds vast and disoriented, guitar lines spiraling into orchestral arrangements, the vocals oscillating between mumbled intimacy and full-throated desperation.

The last great boy band week A boy band's third album sells 1.2 million copies on its first day and 2.4 million by the end of the week, a record that will stand for fifteen years. The album title references the group's legal freedom from a former manager. Four months later, another group on the same label sells 1.6 million copies in its first week with their own new release. The label behind both acts, operating from New York, is now the most commercially dominant force in American music. The Swedish studio that produced hits for all its biggest clients closes permanently this year, two years after the death of its founder.

The debut that outsold the decade A six-member band from Los Angeles releases its debut album in October to modest first-week numbers: 50,000 copies. Then it keeps selling. And selling. By the end of the following year, it has moved 4.8 million copies in the United States alone, becoming the best-selling album of 2001. It eventually ships 32 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling debut of the twenty-first century. The formula, rapped verses over distorted guitars with a sung chorus and a turntablist adding texture, is simple enough to be instantly accessible and muscular enough to fill arenas.

El Paso to Malibu A five-piece band from El Paso, Texas, known for violent, chaotic live shows, records its third album over seven weeks at a studio in Malibu with a producer who serves as part-time therapist, pushing the band to capture their stage energy on tape. A visitor spends a full day at the studio, singing on one track and performing a spoken-word piece on another. The album becomes the band's only major-label release before they break up the following year, splitting into two groups that will define progressive rock's next chapter.

Nine days in Toronto A large ensemble from Montreal records a double album in nine days at a studio in Toronto. Four movements of roughly twenty minutes each layer strings, guitars, pianos, and field recordings, including a loudspeaker announcement, a preacher's sermon, and an elderly man reminiscing about an amusement park. The music builds from near-silence to towering walls of sound before dissolving again. No singles, no press interviews, no promotional photographs of the band's faces. The record becomes a landmark of orchestral post-rock without the group ever explaining what it means.

A voice from Philadelphia A spoken-word artist from Philadelphia who had collaborated with a hip-hop band as a performer releases her debut album in July on a small independent label. Nineteen tracks blend R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and poetry into something that resists easy categorization. The album is nominated for a Grammy. Together with a handful of other debut and sophomore records released the same year by women working at the intersection of soul, jazz, and hip-hop, it confirms that the genre sometimes called neo-soul is not a marketing label but a genuine creative community with depth beyond its first wave.