June 2, 1999
America Online says it will buy two Internet music companies, Spinner and Nullsoft.

June 10, 1999
Sony and Digital On-Demand announce in-store kiosks to sell half the Sony catalog, about 4,000 albums.

June 16, 1999
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirms ruling that the Diamond Multimedia’s Rio player is not illegal.

June 19, 1999
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) announces licensing agreement with MP3.com, and says it has sold 1,000 performance rights licenses to Internet sites.

June 28, 1999
Two days before its self-imposed deadline, the recording industry’s SDMI consortium delivers its preliminary specifications for portable devices that play music downloaded from the Internet.

July 14, 1999
Time Warner and Sony announce plans to merge Columbia House with CD Now. The deal subsequently falls apart.

July 21, 1999
MP3.com goes public. Stock trades up 126 percent in the first day.

Sept. 29, 1999
Sony announces the memory stick Walkman, a portable storage and playback device for digital audio files; critics chide Sony for simultaneously fighting digital music as a record label and promoting it as a hardware manufacturer.

Nov. 10, 1999
Carnegie Mellon University imposes penalties on students alleged to have posted digitized music recordings on campus computer systems.

Dec. 7, 1999
Recording Industry Association of America sues Napster for copyright infringement.