Remember when the only real option to bring music with you wherever you went was to pop some enormous batteries into a boombox and carry it around with you? Or, maybe you remember the nostalgic age of Walkmans? The youngest among us at least remember the early age of the iPod, Apple’s premier portable digital music device that revolutionized the industry. On this very day in 2007, though, Apple did something even more revolutionary. The company released the very first version of the iPhone to the masses, and the world was changed forever.

With the iPhone, there was no need to carry separate devices to enjoy some tunes. Instead, Apple integrated music-listening capabilities into an actual phone, and the world hasn’t been the same since.

Apple first introduced the iPod back in 2001, one of the first of its kind to make digital music entirely portable. The iPhone, subsequently, could do everything the iPod could do and more. It was capable of taking photos, playing music, accessing the internet, and taking calls. The age of carrying around a music device, a camera, and a clunky portable cell phone was officially over.

The real breakthrough, though, was the implementation of a touch screen. When this first dropped, it was as if we finally broke through into some technologically advanced future. The vast majority of cell phones up to 2007 featured physical keyboards, which took up a lot of space and resulted in smaller screens. The iPhone, however, was a keyboard, a screen, a music player, a phone, and so on.

The original iPhone model was all the rage immediately after it dropped. Their competitors, like Nokia or the old-school BlackBerry, were left in the dust. Apple claimed that they sold over a million iPhones in just over two months.

But the focus is on the music here, and I can’t skimp on that info. The iPhone’s audio capabilities were pretty revolutionary. Users could store music in their libraries and also listen to music online through YouTube. For music-makers, the iPhone created new opportunities for distribution and even recording.

It seems like we’ve advanced at an alarming rate since 2007. Now, smartphones are at the center of our everyday lives. Plenty of people work from their phones and depend on them for news, communication, and productivity (or lack thereof, depending on how much time you spend scrolling social media). Music consumption has also evolved. Apps like Spotify and YouTube Music continue to influence the way we consume and discover music today. And it all started with the OG iPhone.

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