audio player History 2

The Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia was introduced in September 1998, a few months after the MPMan. It was a success during the holiday season, with sales exceeding expectations. Interest and investment in digital music were subsequently spurred from itThe Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) soon filed a lawsuit,[ alleging that the device encouraged copying music illegally, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of the Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios case and DAPs were legally ruled as electronic devices.[8] Because of the player's notoriety as the target of a major lawsuit, the Rio is erroneously assumed to be the first DAP.
In 1998, Compaq made the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive. It was licensed to HanGo Electronics (now known as Remote Solution), which first sold the PJB-100 (Personal Jukebox) in 1999. The player had an initial capacity of 4.8 GB, which was advertised to be able to hold 1200 songs.
Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_player