Napster Sparked a File-Sharing Revolution 25 Years Ago (torrentfreak.com) 49
TorrentFreak's Ernesto Van der Sar recalls the rise and fall of Napster, the file-sharing empire that kickstarted a global piracy frenzy 25 years ago. Here's an excerpt from his report: At the end of the nineties, technology and the Internet were a playground for young engineers and 'hackers'. Some of them regularly gathered in the w00w00 IRC chatroom on the EFnet network. This tech-think-tank had many notable members, including WhatsApp founder Jan Koum and Shawn Fanning, who logged on with the nickname Napster. In 1998, 17-year-old Fanning shared an idea with the group. 'Napster' wanted to create a network of computers that could share files with each other. More specifically, a central music database that everyone in the world could access.
This idea never left the mind of the young developer. Fanning stopped going to school and flanked by his friend Sean Parker, devoted the following months to making his vision a reality. That moment came on June 1, 1999, when the first public release of Napster was released online. Soon after, the software went viral. Napster was quickly embraced by millions of users, who saw the software as something magical. It was a gateway for musical exploration, one that dwarfed even the largest record stores in town. And all for free. It sounds mundane today, but some equated it to pure technological sorcery. For many top players in the music industry, Napster's sorcery was pure witchcraft. At the time, manufacturing CDs with high profit margins felt like printing money and Napster's appearance threatened to ruin the party. [...]
At the start of 2001, Napster's user base reached a peak of more than 26.4 million worldwide. Yet, despite huge growth and backing from investors, the small file-sharing empire couldn't overcome the legal challenges. The RIAA lawsuit resulted in an injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court, which ordered the network to shut down. This happened during July 2001, little more than two years after Napster launched. By September that year, the case had been settled for millions of dollars. While the Napster craze was over, file-sharing had mesmerized the masses and the genie was out of the bottle. Grokster, KaZaa, Morpheus, LimeWire, and many others popped up and provided sharing alternatives, for as long as they lasted. Meanwhile, BitTorrent was also knocking on the door. "Napster paved the way for Apple's iTunes store, to serve the demand that was clearly there," notes Ernesto. "This music streaming landscape was largely pioneered by a Napster 'fan' from Sweden, Daniel Ek."
"Like many others, Ek was fascinated by the 'all you can play' experience offered by file-sharing software, and that planted the seeds for the music streaming startup Spotify, where he still serves as CEO today. In fact, Spotify itself used file-sharing technology under the hood to ensure swift playback."
This idea never left the mind of the young developer. Fanning stopped going to school and flanked by his friend Sean Parker, devoted the following months to making his vision a reality. That moment came on June 1, 1999, when the first public release of Napster was released online. Soon after, the software went viral. Napster was quickly embraced by millions of users, who saw the software as something magical. It was a gateway for musical exploration, one that dwarfed even the largest record stores in town. And all for free. It sounds mundane today, but some equated it to pure technological sorcery. For many top players in the music industry, Napster's sorcery was pure witchcraft. At the time, manufacturing CDs with high profit margins felt like printing money and Napster's appearance threatened to ruin the party. [...]
At the start of 2001, Napster's user base reached a peak of more than 26.4 million worldwide. Yet, despite huge growth and backing from investors, the small file-sharing empire couldn't overcome the legal challenges. The RIAA lawsuit resulted in an injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court, which ordered the network to shut down. This happened during July 2001, little more than two years after Napster launched. By September that year, the case had been settled for millions of dollars. While the Napster craze was over, file-sharing had mesmerized the masses and the genie was out of the bottle. Grokster, KaZaa, Morpheus, LimeWire, and many others popped up and provided sharing alternatives, for as long as they lasted. Meanwhile, BitTorrent was also knocking on the door. "Napster paved the way for Apple's iTunes store, to serve the demand that was clearly there," notes Ernesto. "This music streaming landscape was largely pioneered by a Napster 'fan' from Sweden, Daniel Ek."
"Like many others, Ek was fascinated by the 'all you can play' experience offered by file-sharing software, and that planted the seeds for the music streaming startup Spotify, where he still serves as CEO today. In fact, Spotify itself used file-sharing technology under the hood to ensure swift playback."
Metallica is banned in this house. (Score:5, Interesting)
Metallica is banned in this house. No LPs, no cassettes, no MP3s, no videos of anything Metallica. Not even sheetmusic.
They forgot who made them. We made them, when we'd buy a record, tape it, spread it, and that resulted in more sales.
But, when push came to shove, Metallica, all corporate, grown-up and rich by this point, stabbed the fans in the back by going all-in against Napster.
Fuck Metallica. Short-sighted fools.
To this day, sometimes when someone sends me a random youtube link for some music, I'll like it and buy it.
One such event ended up with me buying all of the output of a hausmusik outfit called "I Salonisti." Those sales would've not been made, had the music in question not been there in YT to be discovered.
Re:Metallica is banned in this house. (Score:5, Interesting)
Same here and if I hear Metallica playing anywhere I change the station/channel if I can.
Lars/Metallica complaining about sharing music probably accelerated the development of apps like LimeWire that shared any kind of files.
Re:Metallica is banned in this house. (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here!! "They're not allowed into my ears." is what I tell everyone.
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Same here and if I hear Metallica playing anywhere I change the station/channel if I can.
I have most of Metallica's albums. The pre-Napster ones I paid for and the post Napster ones I didn't. The older stuff is much better, but I'm pretty sure that is not why.
Re:Metallica is banned in this house. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Metallica is banned in this house. (Score:1)
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It's accessible to wealthy (by worldwide standards) consumers in every technologically developed, democratically governed country on the planet, but that's far from every country.
some corporate dope pushing music executive isn't holding your hand telling you what's cool anymore
That's gone, today it's a corporate dope pushing music algorithm that's telling you what's cool. The music industry shed their redundant humans years before anyone started talking about AI.
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But at least it gave us Beer good! Napster bad! [tvtropes.org] .
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I know I'm late to the me-too party about Metallica, but this affected me a little differently. See I was just entering high school and beginning to develop my musical tastes. I was discovering metal and I saw that Metallica said "Don't download our music on Napster", so I didn't. I listened to and got into many other metal bands and bought their music and went to their shows and bought their merch. Somehow that one little quote stuck with me all these years more than their music ever did.
I still have mp3s (Score:4, Informative)
I still have mp3 files from that era. Back then you didn't want anything from the Xing encoder as it made everything sound terrible, you wanted Fraunhofer encoded files. Even before Napster I was getting files from xdcc bots on IRC servers. Ah the good old days.
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I started replacing my napster MP3 a long time ago with OGGs and now FLACs (hd if possible) but I still have some MP3s from back then, probably lots of Jimi Hendrix because I have a huge, excellent, "misc" folder.
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Ha, before MP3s. I was into MP2, XM, MOD, S3M, MID, MIDI, KAR, IT, 669, etc. In fact, I still have and listen to them once in a while. ;)
And with Spotify shutting down car thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And with Spotify shutting down car thing (Score:4, Funny)
Could you use whatever the proper name of it is rather than just calling it "car thing"?
Quick search
Oh wait, it really is called Car Thing.
Winamp (Score:3)
Did anyone else just hear the startup sound in their head?
Re: Winamp (Score:2)
i just hear a llama's ass getting kicked!
Re: Winamp (Score:3)
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And like most revolutions (Score:1)
Slow and steady wins the race and reform is no different, but man it sucks in the meantime
Re:And like most revolutions (Score:5, Informative)
A laughable claim. Music availability is 1000x what it was in the 80's and 90's, both in selection and affordability. When I was working for $3.35 per hour, an audiocassette was $8 and a CD was $16. You could not preview music before buying it, and you didn't like what you had bought, you could go jump in a lake.
Even today, U.S. Recorded Music Revenues Are Still 46% Below 1999 Peaks [digitalmusicnews.com]. And now, for half as much money, you play virtually whatever you want, whenever you want.
It's movie rental that has actually reverted partly back in recent years - Netflix is far below its prime. No more paying one reasonable fee to watch whatever whenever, like 10 years ago. Now you pay a monthly membership for the privilege of paying another $6 to rent a 20 year-old documentary for 24 hours.
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You could not preview music before buying it
Your music stores must've been drek. In the mall I frequented we had two: Disco Mania (opened 1979), and Lafayette (Opened 1968) --- Lafayette, of course, closed when all of Lafayette Radio closed, but that one store was renamed to "VideoSonics" and was still successful.
Both had attendants who you'd hum a few bars, or sing a few (badly) sung lines,, and they'd know. "Yeah. Rock, Iron Butterfly." Or "Classical, Mozart, all the way in the back of the rack, the Piano Trios" *holds it up* "Yep, that's the
Just throwing this out there (Score:2)
https://cs10.pikabu.ru/post_im... [pikabu.ru]
Intellectual property (Score:4, Insightful)
On a related note, it's become quite obvious that our intellectual property laws are a poor match for progress. Software for example, they neglected to make release of source code a pre-requisite for being granted copyright, and further the copyright term is many decades past when it becomes abandonware. For patents, they're such a landmine that engineers are banned from even looking at patents so in the inevitable lawsuit they can claim they came up with it on their own. Entertainment is created at hundreds of lifetimes worth per year, with the main difficulty being finding the gems; and a lot of it is free. The government funds some research and the result is often looted by someone with copyright/patents.
The era of secretive masters teaching only their apprentice is long gone and has been forever banished by mass production. Perhaps it is time we catch up to reality? The red tape and friction created by the current laws is immense and growing exponentially, the era of AI-boosted IP trolls is just around the corner.
I don't mind buying .mp3 s (Score:2)
and download to my device(s), and play with the programs or apps I choose.
I won't pay for streaming.
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Re: I don't mind buying .mp3 s (Score:1)
At least Soulseek (Score:2)
is still around.
Also Napster was cool for sharing pirated software, there was a program that would change the file extension from .exe to mp3 and revert it back.
I still have the 100GB I download w/ Napster (Score:2)
Good book about this for those interested (Score:4, Interesting)
The book, "How Music got Free", by Stephen Witt traces the origins of digital music piracy.
Now Spotify owns all the stolen MP3's, rents them (Score:2)
Since Spotify started renting MP3 streams to consumers, musicians still get no money from MP3's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Bittorrent existed before Napster (Score:1)
Re: Bittorrent existed before Napster (Score:2)
Napster ('99), Bittorrent ('01) (Score:2)
Bittorrent was released (2001) 2 years after Napster's initial release (1999).
AFAIR, prior to Napster file sharing tools were limited to searching one server / channel / peer at a time (e.g. Usenet, FTP, IRC and BBSs). Napster was the first *network wide* searching tool I encountered and that made it a *much* more effective tool than anything I'd used before. IMO, that, and the nice UI (which resulted in a much bigger user base on to the platform), is what set Napster apart at the time.
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Re: Napster ('99), Bittorrent ('01) (Score:2)
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Napster, the good ole days.... (Score:4, Informative)
That was peak music also (Score:2)