The 20 CDs Curated by Steve Jobs and Placed on Prototype iPods (2001)

On Octo­ber 23, 2001, almost exact­ly 15 years ago, Steve Jobs intro­duced the very first iPod–an mp3 play­er, capa­ble of “putting 1,000 songs in your pock­et” and play­ing cd-qual­i­ty music. A nov­el con­cept back then. A prod­uct we take for grant­ed today.

Above, you can watch Jobs make the first iPod pitch. And below find a list of the 20 cds that came loaded onto iPod pro­to­types giv­en to jour­nal­ists attend­ing the launch event. What bet­ter way for them to demo the gad­get?

The list comes from Nobuyu­ki Hayashi, a Japan­ese reporter, who was there that day. If you know some­thing about Jobs’ musi­cal tastes, you’ll see that he had a strong hand in the cura­tion:

• Clas­sic Yo-Yo by Yo-Yo Ma
• Mozart:Symphonies Nos.35–41 by Karl Böhm
• Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by Glenn Gould
• Bridge Over Trou­bled Water by Simon & Gar­funkel
• Book­ends by Simon & Gar­funkel
• The Boot­leg Series, Vol. 4: Live 1966 — The “Roy­al Albert Hall” Con­cert by Bob Dylan
• A Hard Day’s Night by The Bea­t­les
• Abbey Road by The Bea­t­les
• Live In Cook Coun­ty Jail by B.B. King
• The Cole Porter Song­book, Vol 1 by Ella Fitzger­ald
• Kind of Blue by Miles Davis
• Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quar­tet
• Jagged Lit­tle Pill by Ala­nis Moris­sette
• Sur­fac­ing by Sarah McLach­lan
• Nev­er mind by Nir­vana
• Bob Mar­ley & The Wail­ers by Leg­end
• Breathe by Faith Hill
• Crash by Dave Matthews Band
• Play & Play: B Sides by Moby
• O Broth­er, Where Art Thou? (Music from the Motion Pic­ture)

h/t Eli

via Dar­ing Fire­ball

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