How a teenager's app called Napster nearly destroyed the music industry
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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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.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Dorm Room Revolution2 min
- 03The Industry Panic3 min
- 04Metallica and the Public Backlash2 min
- 05The Fall and the Aftermath3 min
- 06Outro1 min
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