Napster’s launch changed music forever
‘Infinite digital jukebox’ reset expectations for how tunes are consumed
Remember Napster, the online network that let you download music tracks for free? All it did was totally change the entertainment industry.
Still, you may not recall its influence because the first version of Napster had a relatively short life. Soon after Napster launched on June 1, 1999, the recording industry sued to have it shut down.
Over the ensuing months as Napster fought for its life in court, consumers continued to rip CDs and put tracks onto their computers and onto the file-sharing network so others could download them. Napster grew from 20 million users in 2000 to an estimated 80 million users at its peak, The Guardian reported.
“Napster wasn’t just a file-sharing service; it was the infinite digital jukebox. And it was free,” author Stephen Witt wrote in the 2015 book “How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century and the Patient Zero of Piracy.”
As Saturday marked the 25th anniversary of Napster, we look back at the creation of the controversial file-sharing service, the impact it made and where the brand stands today.
Paving the way for streaming
After Napster shut down in July 2001, the company went into bankruptcy and reemerged as a subscription service in 2003 after being purchased by software maker Roxio. By then Apple had opened its iTunes Store for consumers willing to pay for tracks and albums. Record industry attorneys were left fighting newer, harder-to-shut-down illegal networks for sharing music freely.
But none captured the zeitgeist to the extent of the original Napster, which reset consumer expectations for music – and, eventually, movies and video games.
Digital downloads and music streaming services – from Amazon Music and Apple Music to Deezer, Pandora, Spotify and Tidal – were all foreshadowed by Napster, says Ken Pohlmann, professor emeritus at the University of Miami, an electrical engineer and author of “Principles of Digital Audio.”
“The same online distribution model paved the way for the creation of video streaming” and services such as Netflix, he said.
Founding and lawsuits
Shawn Fanning began work on what would become Napster as a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston. The Napster software, when downloaded and running on a personal computer, allowed users to search through millions of MP3 song files on other people’s PCs that also had the software. All the users could download songs from each other’s computers.
“It was something that just provided a better way … a more reliable way and fun way for people to share music and see each other’s music collection,” the Napster co-founder said in an interview with the BBC, first broadcast in 2011. Napster got its name from Fanning’s nickname he earned as a result of his hairdo.
Amid the hubbub, Fanning would wind up on the cover of Time magazine and Napster would grace Newsweek’s cover, too. But the recording industry had a different opinion of Napster, decrying how the network allowed users to distribute music anonymously, which went beyond the typical “fair use” of sharing copyrighted work with friends if you weren’t profiting.
“A safe haven for piracy,” is how the Recording Industry Association of America described Napster in its lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, which was filed in December 1999, as detailed in “All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster” by Joseph Menn.
The RIAA’s suit sought $100,000 for each copyright-protected song shared over the network, or about $100 million, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. While some musicians supported Napster and wanted labels to embrace a subscription service, other artists were more aggressive at voicing concerns about Napster’s evils.
Among them: Rock band Metallica and record producer and rapper Dr. Dre, who filed their own copyright infringement suits soon after the RIAA filed suit on behalf of the record labels.
‘Unique opportunity in history’
A federal court disagreed with Napster’s contention that users were simply space-shifting their music, because other users could download files they didn’t own previously.
Napster paid $26 million to settle separate suits filed by music publishers and songwriters, but buckled under the court’s decision in the case brought by the record labels and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.
Meanwhile, the recording industry began suing those sharing and downloading music. Eventually about 17,000 were sued, “all just average individuals,” said Witt, who is also an executive producer on “How Music Got Free,” which is based on his 2015 book.
The team at Napster wanted to make a deal with the record industry, Napster co-founder Sean Parker told The New Yorker in 2014. “Napster had been this cultural revolution, much more than it was ever a legitimate company,” he said.
“We said, ‘If you shut down Napster, it’s going to splinter, and you’re going to have a Whac-A-Mole problem on your hands, where you’re fighting service after service and you’re never going to get all those users back in one place.’ And that’s what happened,” Parker said.
USA TODAY was unable to reach Fanning and Parker for this story.
Now a subscription service
Napster is still playing tunes, but as a subscription service now, although it has only a small fraction of the subscribers of dominant competitors like Apple, Amazon, Spotify and YouTube Music.
Many still think the brand has promise. It has changed hands several times, including being owned by Best Buy in 2008 and folded into the Rhapsody music service, which acquired it in 2011.
It’s currently owned by a privately held consortium headed by Hivemind Capital, an investment firm focusing on digital media, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Hivemind acquired Napster in 2022 from virtual reality company MelodyVR.