How Napster Inspired a Generation of Rule-Breaking Entrepreneurs (fastcompany.com) 16
Napster's latest AI pivot "is the latest in a series of attempts by various owners to ride its brand cachet during emerging tech waves," Fast Company reported in July.
In March, it sold for $207 million to Infinite Reality, an immersive digital media and e-commerce company, which also rebranded as Napster last month. Since 2020, other owners have included a British VR music startup (to create VR concerts) and two crypto-focused companies that bought it to anchor a Web3 music platform. Napster's launch follows a growing number of attempts to drive AI adoption beyond smartphones and laptops.
And tonight the Washington Post re-visited the legacy of Napster's original mp3-sharing model, arguing Napster "inspired successive generations of entrepreneurs to risk flouting the law so they could grow enough to get the laws changed to suit them, including Airbnb and Uber." "Napster to me embodies the idea that it is better to seek forgiveness than permission," said Mark Lemley, director of Stanford Law School's Program in Law, Science & Technology. "It didn't work out well for Napster or for many of the others who got sued, but it worked out very well for everyone else — users, and eventually the content industry, too, which is making record profits...." [Napster co-founder Sean] Parker later advised Spotify, and Napster marketing chief Oliver Schusser is now Apple's vice president for music.
Although many users saw Napster as an extension of rock-and-roll rebellion, that was not the company's real plan. First Fanning's majority-owning uncle, and then venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, wanted the start-up to leverage its knowledge of individual music consumers to make lucrative deals with the labels, according to internal documents this reporter found in researching a book on Napster. They warned that if no agreement were reached and Napster failed, more decentralized pirate services would take the audience and offer the labels nothing.
But settlement talks failed. The litigation blitz also took down a Napster competitor called Scour, which a young Travis Kalanick had joined shortly after its founding. Kalanick later created Uber, dedicated to overthrowing taxi regulations.
The article concludes that "Now it is Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google, among the largest companies in the world, bankrolling the consumption of all media.
"They, too, have absorbed Napster's lessons in realpolitik, namely to build it first and hope the regulators will either yield or catch up."
And tonight the Washington Post re-visited the legacy of Napster's original mp3-sharing model, arguing Napster "inspired successive generations of entrepreneurs to risk flouting the law so they could grow enough to get the laws changed to suit them, including Airbnb and Uber." "Napster to me embodies the idea that it is better to seek forgiveness than permission," said Mark Lemley, director of Stanford Law School's Program in Law, Science & Technology. "It didn't work out well for Napster or for many of the others who got sued, but it worked out very well for everyone else — users, and eventually the content industry, too, which is making record profits...." [Napster co-founder Sean] Parker later advised Spotify, and Napster marketing chief Oliver Schusser is now Apple's vice president for music.
Although many users saw Napster as an extension of rock-and-roll rebellion, that was not the company's real plan. First Fanning's majority-owning uncle, and then venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, wanted the start-up to leverage its knowledge of individual music consumers to make lucrative deals with the labels, according to internal documents this reporter found in researching a book on Napster. They warned that if no agreement were reached and Napster failed, more decentralized pirate services would take the audience and offer the labels nothing.
But settlement talks failed. The litigation blitz also took down a Napster competitor called Scour, which a young Travis Kalanick had joined shortly after its founding. Kalanick later created Uber, dedicated to overthrowing taxi regulations.
The article concludes that "Now it is Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google, among the largest companies in the world, bankrolling the consumption of all media.
"They, too, have absorbed Napster's lessons in realpolitik, namely to build it first and hope the regulators will either yield or catch up."
Now it is Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really?
If anything, Napster told us another story - no matter how innovative and revolutionary you are, without a proper institutional backing you'll get devastated very quickly.
The successful entrepreneurs read the signs and sold out to all of the above instead of embracing the "asking for forgiveness instead of permission startup" bullshit.
Having Zuck pay you a hundred million and shield you from litigation with his CIA-sponsored outfit is nowhere near to what Napster was.
Re: (Score:3)
Also... It shows us how those who are in control of equity see value primarily in cynical use of brand recognition, and that a brand need not actually have any real capacity to ever earn again to be passed around as a commodity like it was an art holding... just ever depreciating in value.
Ironically, even a piece like this sorta-complaining that Napster's brand isn't really attached to anything meaningful is still doing part of the work to keep a dead brand in global consciousness so that it can be exploite
Re: (Score:2)
Haaar
Or when regulators... (Score:2)
Or when regulators fine you $100 million (that you appeal) after making a $1 billion on the "app" you a fined for building it.
JoshK.
I am "old school", but a rule broken. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I am "old school", but a rule broken. (Score:4, Interesting)
A rule broken should be a rule punished.
The reason we have bad laws and selective enforcement is arguably that enforcement is not obligatory. But the flip side of that is that you would still have unfair outcomes due to unfair, prejudiced courts.
Searching for a Narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is a classic example of trying to create a tight narrative thread around events when in reality they are only connected by that thread very loosely.
I think the more important lesson here is that valuation will often be measured in terms of things like users, name recognition, and appearing in the press rather than things like profit, growth, or revenue. Basically, the goal is to make your business "a thing" and then figure out how to monetize it in stage two. That's what Napster has in common with Google, Uber, AirB&B, OpenAI, etc. Those are just the successes—the Theranoses and WeWorks are the more common examples (without that level of notoriety).
As far as "rule breaking," I don't know why Napster would be the genesis of "rule breaking entrepreneurs." It seems to me that the willingness to break rules and take crazy risks has always been common among entrepreneurs. You could go back to the robber barons of the industrial age. Entrepreneurs completely disregarding legal, ethical, and practical considerations seems to be pretty common and always has been, regardless of industry.
Re: (Score:2)
Napster and Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing Napster showed is that people see copyright as optional and you can't enforce it against the masses.
If you start enforcing copyright as it is written into law, people start hating you and find ways to evade. Since Napster filesharing evolved, but never vanished, no matter how much DRM, legal threats, etc. companies use. Find an effective way to enforce copyright and you'll get a revolution. People do not follow copyright, they only tolerate it where it does not matter (I have the money, I just buy it) or is convenient enough (Netflix has a flatrate) or ignore it because they can when enforcement is lax. But if you really start putting all the people in jail like the anti-piracy ads suggest, you'll only gain huge protests and people hating your brand.
Apple? (Score:2)
Apple uses web content for training, but I don't think they have been caught using anything with registered copyrights. The use of Youtube transcripts for a research model is the worst they have been caught doing.
AFAICS they are content renting other people's technology till the Supreme Court has its say.
Wait!!! Twenty plus years ago we were being "sold" (Score:2)
"venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, wanted the start-up to leverage its knowledge of individual music consumers to make lucrative deals with the labels"
This is my shocked face
OK, so not Napster (Score:2)
Just another bunch to TechBro shitheads who bought the name to market their product. The real Napster was crushed because of what it inspired, this is just Roxio dancing on its grave.
I remember Scour (Score:2)
I remember Scour [wikipedia.org]. It was a search engine but it used SMB (Samba) [wikipedia.org].