Napster

» see napster.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

shawn fanning was 19 years old when he wrote napster. he was a college student at northeastern university in boston. the project started as a way to help his roommate and a few friends share music more easily. the prototype shipped in june 1999. within months it was a phenomenon.

napster grew fast. by february 2001 it had about 80 million registered users. that was every internet-connected american college student plus most of europe. for two years napster was the most-installed software on any university network. dorm room internet connections all over the world were saturated with napster traffic.

the recording industry sued napster in december 1999. metallica sued napster in april 2000. dr dre sued in the same period. the legal questions were new because the technology was new. how do existing copyright laws apply to a peer-to-peer network where the operator does not actually host any of the music?

the courts said: still infringement, even if peer-to-peer. napster lost a critical preliminary injunction in february 2001. they tried to settle. they tried to pivot to a paid model. neither worked. on 3 june 2002 the original napster service was shut down.

~ the dossier ~

~ how it actually worked ~

napster was peer-to-peer with a centralized index. you installed the napster client on your computer. it scanned your hard drive for mp3 files. it uploaded a list of those files (just filenames and sizes, not the actual content) to napster's central servers. when other users searched, the central servers returned a list of users who had matching files. you downloaded directly from those users.

this architecture was the legal vulnerability. napster had a central server that knew about every file on the network. they could in principle have filtered out copyrighted material. they did not, because doing so would have removed essentially the entire library. the courts said this knowledge made them liable.

the architecture was also the technical magic. you had access to whatever any of 80 million users had. obscure b-sides. live recordings. european releases. cover bands. demos. anything that anybody had ripped to mp3 was on napster within hours. the catalog was probably the most complete music collection ever assembled.

~ the lawsuits ~

the RIAA sued napster in december 1999, less than six months after launch. the suit alleged contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. metallica sued separately in april 2000 after one of their songs leaked early through napster. dr dre sued in the same window.

the metallica lawsuit was particularly bruising for napster. metallica's lars ulrich became the public face of the recording industry's anti-napster campaign. there was a famous moment where metallica delivered a list of 335,435 napster users they wanted banned for sharing metallica music. the cultural reaction was severe. for a generation of young music fans, metallica became "the band that sued its own audience."

the legal arguments turned on whether napster qualified for safe harbor protections under the dmca. the courts said no, because napster's central servers had detailed knowledge of every file on the network. that ruling, in a&m records v napster (2001), is the foundation of all subsequent peer-to-peer copyright cases.

~ the curtain ~

napster lost a&m records v napster in february 2001. the court ordered them to remove copyrighted music from the network. complying with that order would have killed the product since almost everything was copyrighted. they tried to comply by deploying filtering technology that worked imperfectly. the central servers kept hosting indexes that included copyrighted files.

napster filed for bankruptcy in june 2002. the original peer-to-peer network was shut down on 3 june 2002. the napster brand was sold several times in subsequent years (to roxio, then to best buy, then to rhapsody). the modern napster.com is a legitimate music streaming service that has nothing to do with the original napster except the name.

shawn fanning continued working in technology after napster. he started other companies (rupture, snocap, helium). none of them had the same impact as napster. he was, briefly, the most famous tech founder under 25 in america. the fame did not transfer well to other projects.

~ what it changed ~

the recording industry's revenue collapsed after napster. the industry made about 14.6 billion dollars in 1999. by 2014 it had dropped to 6.7 billion, less than half. the recovery did not happen until streaming (spotify, apple music) became dominant. industry revenue did not return to 1999 levels until 2021, twenty-two years later.

the conventional industry narrative blames napster for that loss. the reality is more complicated. napster started a process. kazaa, limewire, bittorrent, pirate bay all continued it. illegal file sharing kept being possible because peer-to-peer technology kept improving. the industry could not sue every new file-sharing service into oblivion. they eventually had to compete by offering legitimate streaming. that took fifteen years.

napster also forever changed the relationship between consumers and music. before napster, music was a thing you bought as a physical object (CD, cassette, vinyl) and owned. after napster, music was a thing you accessed (streamed, downloaded, played). spotify and apple music were possible because napster had already made the access model culturally normal.

~ what we lost ~

the catalog. napster's complete library was a strange artifact. it had everything. modern streaming services have license gaps. some artists are not on spotify. some songs are not on apple music. napster had no licenses and therefore no gaps. the comprehensive catalog as a feature is something modern services have not matched.

the discovery experience. napster's search returned mislabeled files, unreleased material, b-sides nobody had heard, regional releases not available in your country. you would search for one song and find three other things you had never heard. modern streaming has playlists and algorithms but does not have the same chaotic-discovery quality.

the moral grayness. napster felt clearly illegal but commonly done. it was a small criminal act every college student in america was committing daily. that creates a specific cultural texture that legal streaming has erased. spotify is legitimate. nothing about it feels like getting away with something. napster always felt like getting away with something. that was part of the appeal.

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