This year marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of the much maligned grandaddy of peer-to-peer music piracy, Napster, and the eighth of the music industry’s first terrible move.
Napster founder Shawn Fanning didn’t exactly invent music file sharing—before Napster, Mac people had Hotline, which, being Mac software, presumably had better fonts, a gorgeous interface, and seven rabid users. What made Napster more than piracy was its many millions of users and billions of downloads. Napster had a population of music fans communicating their preferences and acting as free distributors and archivists, as well as consumers.
It wasn’t the 72,000 copies of Enter Sandman that made Napster interesting. It was finding out that someone out there had digitized their beloved recording of the TV musical version of Around the World with Nellie Bly—some crazy wonderful someone. It’s amazing that Napster didn’t result in more marriages based on hopelessly obscure tastes. It was the only moment when we could tell what bits of 20th century music people care about today, or had a chance to let tomorrow care about them too.
Shortly after the brief months it took to build the greatest catalog of all time, the Napster library was burned to the ground by a 2001 court decision. Now the vestige of its unified vision of all recorded music decomposes, slowly deallocated on isolated hard drives around the world.
With that foot well shot off, the music industry could turn its attention to suing teenagers for billions of dollars.
That Napster was illegal hardly seems to matter now. Straight-up piracy only spread, though that singular catalog was never matched. Music DRM is increasingly abandoned as a failure, and P2P turns out to be a bandwidth money saver. Had the labels embraced Napster, they might have retained a logistical and popular relevancy in the MP3 era. There was no shortage of ideas on how to do it—subscriptions, compulsory licenses, and so on. In the end, it turns out that the biggest losers in the Napster case, besides the fans of the dulcet Nellie Bly, are the music companies. They shut the door on their one chance at the future.
Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications. Her work has ranged from legal journalism to the inner life of pirate organizations.
Comments are closed on this article
robotsneedhugs2
July 07, 2009 at 10:02am
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html
A similar article. very good read
Muerte
July 07, 2009 at 5:05am
I agree. I haven't bought a cd or downloaded any music since Napster died.
I believe in paying for music but I believe I should have the right to do with it what I want once I own it as long as I'm not reselling it. I'm on the fence about sharing files because I can see both sides.
I believe the music industry is shooting itself in the foot by not allowing some form of file sharing but all they see is a loss of profit. Like they wouldn't spend a few 10's of thousands of dollars on some sort of advertising anyhow.
dc10ten
July 07, 2009 at 7:23pm
unfortunatly the argument that record labels are using is that they were selling a service, not a product...
personally i dont remember purchasing a service when i would buy my cds
notailmouse2
July 07, 2009 at 4:22am
The recording industry's current model is broken. the charge ridiculous amount for there music videos etc... and load it with restrictive drm. Until these practices stop there need to be pirates to force change. The only thing the industry cares about is money at the moment and piracy hits them in the wallet. Don't get me wrong, people deserve to get paid for their work
Ask yourself these questions... are you really blindly supporting the recording industry.
Do you think drm or aacs is for your benefit?
Why should you have to put up with that?
Why is it illegal for me to remove it for my own personal use?
Why is the stupid shit even with my media?
Why does the industry punish me with restrictive practices in a futile attempt to stop piracy?
shellpc
July 07, 2009 at 4:51am
Ever heard of a boycott? There are legal ways to hit em in the wallet. Get organized and put up petitions or boycott them. Talk to your congressman and representatives about the issue.
tulip
July 07, 2009 at 2:35am
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural"search results.SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
http://www.webmarketingexperts.com.au/
Stockislander
July 07, 2009 at 1:05am
You can have all the free music and video you want... Legally!
Feel the pulse of the Mighty Interwebs!!
Visit a veritable Cathedral to the Freedom of File Sharing!!!
Behold the Future of Art!!!!
www.youtube.com
Why give Professionals any money? They can get Real Jobs like everyone else!!!!
shellpc
July 07, 2009 at 1:22am
Entertainment is a real job and has been throughout history. They deserve to get paid for their work just as much as any other professional. If you don't like what they're selling, then you don't buy it.
EpicEyes
July 06, 2009 at 11:49pm
file sharing is like kidnapping? put down the left handed cigarettes bud.
The worst thing the industry ever did was shut down napster. They woke a waiting beast. Good for us, bad for them. The file sharing world still has a vendetta against metallica. The music industry can thank good ol' Larz for their headaches. Napster was just the beginning. Every time they shut down a torrent tracker, 10 more pop up. Lokitorrent, suprnova and torrentbits went down and dozens upon dozens more were created. I'm pro file sharing, period. The bulk of the torrent traffic these days tho isn't about music, it's about video... Movies, tv eps and software.
I do buy cd's still. The ones that are worth my money but if an artist puts out a 12 track cd and it has 2 good songs on it, sorry, I'll download it. You want my money, release quality music, period. Besides, the bulk of their money is made touring. Quit crying.. we're not keeping your ferrari's out of your garage.
shellpc
July 07, 2009 at 1:20am
While I agree they missed an opportunity at a new source of revenue and only made things worse for them, you're still a thief. No matter how you justify it.
ALso, if you only cared about 2 songs on a cd you've got plenty of options to buy just those 2 songs, such as Amazon, iTunes and several other distributors that let you buy per track rather than a whole cd.
-it-
July 07, 2009 at 4:29am
well you could think of it in a positive way. the more people who listen to songs the more popularity an artist gets. the more popular an artist gets the more money that person makes on tours.
in my expierence, itunes blows. rhapsody rules.
shellpc
July 07, 2009 at 4:53am
We have raido and internet radio plus quite a few other legal outlets for musicians to get their music out there.
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