32 Years Ago Today, Aerosmith Changed the Internet Forever
Walk this way, and we'll tell you all about how Aerosmith revolutionized the music industry and changed the internet in the process 32 years ago today.
The boys from Boston were riding high off the massive success of their April 1993 album, Get a Grip, when Geffen Records decided, in 1994, to release the B-side single "Head First" as an exclusive digital download. This was the first time something like that had ever been done by a major record label.
Music lovers today take for granted just how easy it is to stream or download songs on a plethora of platforms, including Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music or Pandora. Back then, even peer-to-peer networks like Napster and Limewire were years away from cultural domination, while internet speeds were slow as hell.
According to a Vice deep dive, the song was released as a 4-megabyte WAV file to CompuServe subscribers on June 27, 1994. For the uninitiated, CompuServe provided the first commercial online service, offering chat systems, messaging forums, and gaming. It sprang up just before Prodigy and America Online, or AOL, which would later dominate the space.
After Geffen started making 30-second snippets of songs from their massive catalog available for download on CompuServe's Music Vendors Forum, the label saw promise. Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton was also a big supporter of the online service, telling Vice he would often speak to fans through its forums.
"If our fans are out there driving down that information superhighway, then we want to be playing at the truck stop," Steven Tyler proclaimed in a press release, after the decision was made to drop "Head First" for free on the platform. CompuServe's $10-per-hour usage fee was also waived for those downloading the track.
On June 27, 1994, "Head First" was officially released to CompuServe's 2 million users and, according to UCR, was downloaded by roughly 10,000 of them.
As for why that song was chosen, Geffen's Chief Technology Officer at the time, Jim Griffin, told UCR in a 2024 interview that "Head First" was the shortest of all the songs provided as options. He wanted to go short, knowing download speeds would be an issue. Per Vice, the 3:14 song took anywhere from an hour to 90-minutes to download at the time.
Griffin said the whole stunt was "proof of life for digital music," and it wasn't long until other companies began to follow suit.
As Vice noted, Warner Bros. soon followed Geffen into CompuServe's Music Vendors Forum. Then, in 1997, Duran Duran became the first major label artist to sell digital downloads of a single. The song was "Electric Barbarella," and had an exclusive online window before it was released physically. The radio edit sold online for 99 cents, while an "Internet Only Mix" was also offered up for $1.99.
This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Jun 27, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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This story was originally published June 27, 2026 at 8:00 AM.