n a p s t e r

How it all began… Napster began in a college dorm room when a student named Shawn Fanning wanted to share some of his songs with his friends more easily. He started working on the program soon to be known as Napster in his uncle’s office. In January of 1999 Shawn decided to drop out of college to focus more on the program. On June 1st of 1999 he tested the beta version of Napster by giving it to 30 of his friends he met off of chat lines. Napster was an instant success; the test version reached anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 people in a matter of days. By May of 2001 Napster had become one of the most successful web technologies, eventually gaining around 25 million registered users in a little over a year of existence.

How does it work?

How was it used? Most people found the source by word of mouth. After a brief exploration of what the software had to offer, most were downloading and installing in minutes. CDs you own, songs you’ve never heard and recommendations from friends were all at your fingertips and immediately downloaded to the respective users hard drive.

Was it right... Napster was controversial among artists. Limp Bizkit was one of several bands that fought to keep Napster running. The band claimed that Napster was only helping to distribute their music and thus making them more popular. Napster’s largest market was with college students who “shared” music files on a regular basis; this makes sense knowing how the program started. However, many universities such as Yale, University of Southern California, and Indiana University banned the use of Napster when the program began to take anywhere from 10% to 30% of the schools’ bandwidth. Napster argued that since its users didn't make any money from the copies and that Napster itself was not promoting illegal copies, that it could not be held responsible for illegal music traffic over its network. Oddly enough, during the first half of 2001 after Napster was taken to court and accused of supposedly robbing the industry of millions, CD sales declined by 5.4% - so did Napster actually help CD sales?

... or was it wrong? According to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America): The overwhelming majority of the Mp3 files offered on Napster are infringing – and the district court found that Napster knows this and even encourages it. Napster is thus enabling and encouraging the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted music. Just because Napster itself may not house the infringing recordings does not mean Napster is not guilty of copyright infringement. Many artists are against the idea of peer-to-peer file sharing, like Napster provides. “Artists, like anyone else, should be paid for their work.” - Lou Reed “Napster is robbing me blind.” - Scott Stapp, Creed “I think the fact that Napster is stealing recorded music is something that we have to stop. It’s taking money out of my kid’s mouth.” - Art Alexakis, Everclear

Who should worry? Platinum Sellers? So far it seems that modern bands who sell a lot of albums are also shared often. Small-time Acts? Unknown bands aren't being exposed nearly as much as artists with platinum status albums.

Public opinion… A poll conducted by PC Data in July 2000 suggested that home PC users favored Napster’s Arguments. The poll surveyed 1,560 home Internet users over a 5-day period. 56% agreed with the statement that “Downloading music over the Internet is simply a harmless way of allowing free exchange of music.” 58% had some familiarity with MP3 technology, and 36% had some familiarity with Napster.

What happened? As you probably know, Napster has been under fire from the Record Industry ordering them to close there service as it was infringing copyright laws. Napster has been fighting this case for ages now, and finally they had to give in and were forced to compromise with the judge - if they wanted to keep there servers open, they had to start filtering out there servers so no-one could download files which were protected by copyright.

Napster Today Roxio has re-launched Napster, and there won't be any legal issues this time; as Roxio now holds download distribution agreements with all five music majors. Roxio says it has spent $20m to re-launch Napster. They also expect that the new business will "result in negative cash flows until the service is widely adopted".