The Rise and Fall of Diamond Multimedia: It Built the First MP3 Player, Then Lost to the iPod

Long before the iPod made digital music mainstream, Diamond Multimedia was already betting on it. Best known in the 1990s for graphics cards and modems, the company launched the Rio PMP300 in 1998, one of the first portable MP3 players and a device so disruptive that the music industry went to court to stop it. Diamond won that battle, but the fight for the future of portable audio was only beginning. This video explores how Diamond Multimedia rose from a PC hardware maker to a pioneer of digital music, the landmark RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia lawsuit that helped legalize the MP3 player, the merger with S3 that turned the company into SonicBlue, and how Apple's iPod overtook the Rio line. From the 3D graphics boom to bankruptcy, it is the story of a company that saw the future first but could not hold on to it.