From physical media to downloads
Through the 1990s, music meant CDs and TV meant broadcast or cable, on a schedule someone else set. Napster, launched in 1999, let people share MP3 files for free — and got sued into shutting down within two years, but it proved there was massive demand for buying music by the song instead of the whole album. Apple's iTunes Store (2003) turned that demand into a legal, working business.
Music goes on-demand
Buying individual songs was still ownership, just smaller. The real shift was Spotify (launched in Sweden in 2008, US in 2011): pay a monthly fee, get access to nearly everything, own nothing. Apple Music and others followed the same subscription model. Piracy dropped as legal access got easier and cheaper than finding a pirated file.
TV cuts the cord
Netflix started as DVD-by-mail in 1997 and didn't launch streaming until 2007. For years it mostly played licensed shows and movies from studios. The real turning point was original content — House of Cards (2013) proved a streaming service could make its own hit and use it to attract subscribers directly, without cable. That set off a wave of competitors, each wanting their own exclusive shows.
The landscape today
What started as "cut the cable bill, save money" has fragmented into many separate subscriptions, each with its own exclusive shows — often adding up to more than cable cost. Ad-supported cheaper tiers have become common as a middle ground. There's also a visible trend back toward bundling — apps and providers packaging multiple streaming services together, echoing the cable bundle everyone originally left.