Twenty Thousand Hertz Napster: How free music broke the industry
Sep 30, 2020
Explore the rise and fall of Napster, its impact on the music industry, legal battles with record labels, and the transformation of the music consumption landscape. Discover how Napster revolutionized music distribution, challenged industry norms, and paved the way for modern streaming services.
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Alex's Napster Music Bonding
- Alex Lewis and his dad bonded over searching and downloading music on Napster back when it was new and exciting.
- This experience shaped Alex's sense of entitlement to free music, unaware that someone else paid for it.
90s Album Sales Were Inefficient
- In the 90s, buying a full CD to get one or two favorite songs was common despite lots of filler content.
- This created ripe conditions for disruption by a service offering music a la carte.
Napster's Peer-to-Peer Design
- Sean Fanning created Napster to efficiently share MP3 music files peer-to-peer among users.
- Napster never hosted music itself; it only facilitated user-to-user file sharing on their own hard drives.