Media & entertainment
How a teenager's app called Napster nearly destroyed the music industry
11 min
Napster let anyone copy any song for free almost overnight, gutting record sales, triggering a wave of lawsuits, and forcing the entire industry to reinvent how music is sold.
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Show notes
Napster reached eighty million users by early twenty-one by turning personal computers into global file-sharing nodes.
University networks saw sixty percent of their total traffic consumed by students downloading music via Napster.
Record labels rejected a one billion dollar settlement offer to pursue a total legal shutdown of the service.
Lars Ulrich and Dr. Dre faced public backlash for suing three hundred thousand of their own fans.
The permanent injunction against Napster's centralized directory forced the service into bankruptcy by June twenty-two.
Napster's collapse paved the way for decentralized networks like LimeWire and the eventual rise of Spotify.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Dorm Room Revolution2 min
- 3The Industry Panic3 min
- 4Metallica and the Public Backlash2 min
- 5The Fall and the Aftermath3 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- Napster | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica
- Napster -- the file-sharing service -- helped to disrupt the record industry : NPR
- ICYMI - Napster Broke the Musi… - Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift - Apple Podcasts
- Napster: How free music broke the industry — Twenty Thousand Hertz - The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.
- NEW – The Lawsuit That Made Spotify Possible | Shane Hewitt
- Napster - Wikipedia
- 1670: "Napster" — JC
- The Rise and Fall of Napster
- Spectacular Failures - Napster fought the law and the law won (Transcript) | Spectacular Failures
- Oversharing: how Napster nearly killed the music industry
- 25 years ago, Napster changed how we listen to music forever : NPR
- How Napster created a monster that became bigger than the music industry
- Meet the Napster
- File-Sharing PC Software Shakes Up Music World
- History of Napster, Inc. – FundingUniverse
- Meet the Napster -- Printout -- TIME
- How Napster created a monster that became bigger than the music industry | Business | gmtoday.com
- When Metallica took on Napster: 25 years of the trial that changed the music industry forever | Culture | EL PAÍS English
- RECORDS INC MCA v. NAPSTER INC (2001)
- RIAA v. Napster: A Window onto the Future of Copyright Law in the Internet Age, 18 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 755 (2000)
- Napster -- the file-sharing service -- helped to disrupt the record industry | WUNC News
- The Emergence of Napster and P2P File Sharing in 1999 | Cybercultural
- Meet the Napster - October 2, 2000
- Napster Is Ordered to Halt Swap of Music
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