> but if so then where were people originally getting music to put on iPods
The first iPod was a Mac-only Firewire device. "You need a Mac with Firewire support to even use this thing" set a minimum platform spec that also made other things implicit — in this case, the availability of a CD-ROM drive. (Which wasn't a given in 2001, but was a given on any Mac that had Firewire support.)
iTunes the software was introduced alongside the iPod; but the iTunes Music Store was not. iTunes was, at first, a CD ripping program (and library manager for music ripped from CD.) To buy music for your iPod, you'd go to the record store, buy a CD, put it in your Mac, rip it, and then load it onto the iPod.
And while, yes, music piracy slightly predated the iTunes Music Store, there were a lot of people buying iPods in that era who had fancy Mac computers, but just plain didn't have internet service to their homes, and so for whom music piracy wasn't really a possibility†. 2001 was an interesting time; Internet access was still very unevenly distributed, and in ways that had nothing to do with economic conditions. Rural areas might have phone lines so bad that even a 28.8kbps modem wouldn't work over them. The rollout of ISDN was only just getting started, and was limited to regions with less red tape (much like fiber rollouts in the last decade.)
† Well, okay, a different form of music piracy was probably happening in these Internet-starved areas: if you were willing to shell out for a CD burner for your Mac (not an internal option, rather an external SCSI-over-Firewire one), then you could also use iTunes to burn those ripped songs back onto a mix-tape CD — and then you could give them to your friends, who could in turn rip them to their PCs. Shame about the quality loss in the process (given iTunes' default ripping encoding of 128kbps AAC — though 256kbps AAC was possible even back then), but it'd be no worse than what dubbing between literal compact cassettes would get you, and certainly better than what you'd get by downloading the Napster-standard 96kbps MP3. (And CD-to-CD streaming bitwise dubbing was also possible back then, too, but not with iTunes, only expensive third-party software; I don't think anyone but professional bootleggers had any reason to try that for music. It was more a thing for ensuring you get clean working copies of PC "must have the CD-ROM in to play" games.)
The first iPod was a Mac-only Firewire device. "You need a Mac with Firewire support to even use this thing" set a minimum platform spec that also made other things implicit — in this case, the availability of a CD-ROM drive. (Which wasn't a given in 2001, but was a given on any Mac that had Firewire support.)
iTunes the software was introduced alongside the iPod; but the iTunes Music Store was not. iTunes was, at first, a CD ripping program (and library manager for music ripped from CD.) To buy music for your iPod, you'd go to the record store, buy a CD, put it in your Mac, rip it, and then load it onto the iPod.
And while, yes, music piracy slightly predated the iTunes Music Store, there were a lot of people buying iPods in that era who had fancy Mac computers, but just plain didn't have internet service to their homes, and so for whom music piracy wasn't really a possibility†. 2001 was an interesting time; Internet access was still very unevenly distributed, and in ways that had nothing to do with economic conditions. Rural areas might have phone lines so bad that even a 28.8kbps modem wouldn't work over them. The rollout of ISDN was only just getting started, and was limited to regions with less red tape (much like fiber rollouts in the last decade.)
† Well, okay, a different form of music piracy was probably happening in these Internet-starved areas: if you were willing to shell out for a CD burner for your Mac (not an internal option, rather an external SCSI-over-Firewire one), then you could also use iTunes to burn those ripped songs back onto a mix-tape CD — and then you could give them to your friends, who could in turn rip them to their PCs. Shame about the quality loss in the process (given iTunes' default ripping encoding of 128kbps AAC — though 256kbps AAC was possible even back then), but it'd be no worse than what dubbing between literal compact cassettes would get you, and certainly better than what you'd get by downloading the Napster-standard 96kbps MP3. (And CD-to-CD streaming bitwise dubbing was also possible back then, too, but not with iTunes, only expensive third-party software; I don't think anyone but professional bootleggers had any reason to try that for music. It was more a thing for ensuring you get clean working copies of PC "must have the CD-ROM in to play" games.)