New Technologies
The advent of the internet brought the programme to an international audience for the first time (the Radio 1 website launched in 1996). In 2002 the BBC launched their 'listen again' online radio service and the Essential Mix (along with the Essential Selection) became consistently the most popular specialist music show of the whole BBC Radio network amongst internet users. According to BBC server logs, the show receives around 50,000 online requests per week (though this can be significantly higher, with the 2003 Ibiza show attracting more than 96,000 requests), which compares to the show's "live" audience of 80,000. Whilst demand for a podcast of the show is high, the BBC has resisted in making the show available in this way due to copyright issues. The development of peer-to-peer internet technologies spawned a new trend in which fans of the show made recordings of mixes available to users of services such as BitTorrent and eMule. Although illegal, the BBC has taken little action against such activity.
However in 2010, Mixriot, a website which hosted stream and download links to past Essential Mix broadcasts dating back to the first ever edition for its members, was asked to remove all its past recordings by production company Somethin' Else due to copyright infringement. The Mixriot website is still live though it has since taken down all Essential Mix broadcasts.
Still many torrent sites and internet forums continue to provide mp3 download links to past shows which can be found easily through internet search engines.
Read more about this topic: Essential Mix