Napster was a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service focused on MP3 music files founded in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. It allowed users to share and download songs from each other’s computers, bypassing record labels and traditional music distribution.
It caught on quickly, becoming a cultural phenomenon and attracting 80 million users at its peak in early 2001. But its disruptive impact on the music industry soon brought legal troubles to its doorstep.
So, why did Napster catch on?
Before Napster (we’re talking pre-1999 here), music distribution was completely different to what we know today. Music was primarily distributed through physical formats like CDs. Cassettes were still being used by those who had a portable audio player such as a Walkman, but they were being phased out.
You’d discover new music through FM radio and music channels like MTV, VH1 and BET. On-demand music was available, but in very limited ways. For example The Box (originally named the Video Jukebox Network) was an interactive channel that played the song you wanted if you called a dial-up number and selected your preferred artist and title.
In terms of ownership, if you wanted a new album, you had to go to a store and buy it. There was no easy way to get a single song unless it was released as a CD or cassette single. By the late 90s, CD burners became more common, and people started ripping music from CDs and sharing them with friends.
Around the same time, the MP3 was gaining traction, a file format that allowed songs to be compressed and stored digitally. Sound quality was good and you could listen to music on your computer. No need for a CD player or Walkman. The problem, however, was availability.
Some people uploaded MP3s on their personal Geocities and Angelfire web pages, but these would often just be small snippets of a song. You could also find MP3s on IRC chatrooms such as #mp3 or #warez, but there’d often be long queues and transfer speeds were slow. And then there was the risk of downloading viruses and malware.
In 1998, Shawn Fanning was a 19 year old computer science student at Northeastern University. He started working on a program that would make finding and sharing music easier.
The idea was straightforward. Instead of searching random websites, users could connect directly to each other’s computers and share MP3 files. The peer-to-peer (P2P) model eliminated the need for a central database and allowed fast, direct file transfers.
Fanning called the program Napster, derived from his childhood nickname “nappy”. He dropped out of Northeastern in early 1999 and teamed up with his friend Sean Parker to help shape the business.
They had first encountered each other in a hacker chatroom in the late 90s. When Fanning told Parker about his idea, Parker immediately saw its potential beyond just a hobby project. He convinced Fanning that it could turn into something much bigger.
Since Fanning had no business experience, Parker stepped in to handle fundraising and legal matters. He helped secure early investments and set up the company legally.
When Napster was launched in beta mode on 1st June 1999, it spread like wildfire, particularly on college campuses since universities were equipped with high-speed internet. You could download an entire album in minutes, something that you wouldn’t be able to do at home with your 28.8k dial-up modem. Universities soon started banning Napster because it was using up too much bandwidth on their networks.
This, of course, created a panic in the music industry. Tens of millions of people were now accessing music in a way that the industry wasn’t in control of. Soon enough, lawsuits appeared.
In December 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Napster, claiming that Napster was enabling users to steal music by making copyrighted songs freely available. Napster, they said, didn’t own the music it was distributing and so it had no legal right to share it.
But Napster rejected these charges, arguing that they weren’t hosting any files themselves. Napster was just a tool that people used to connect with each other. For years, people had bought songs on cassettes and shared it with friends. That wasn’t illegal, and Napster was simply bringing that same concept into the digital world.
Napster also tried to get the wider community to support it. There was a sense that instead of the music industry adapting, it was trying to maintain the status quo of massive profits.
Napster encouraged people to stay connected to its application even when not actively searching for MP3s or communicating with other users. They asked users to email record labels and members of Congress to express support for Napster. And they quoted support from prominent performers such as:
– Prince: “What record companies don’t really understand is that Napster is just one illustration of the growing frustration over how much the record companies control what music people get to hear.”
– Fred Durst: “We believe that the Internet and Napster should not be ignored by the music industry as tools to promote awareness for bands and market music.”
– Madonna: “Napster could be a great way for people to hear your music who wouldn’t have the chance to hear it on the radio.”
– Dave Grohl: “I think it’s a good idea because it’s people trading music. It has nothing to do with industry or finance.”
Napster even tried to show that it was helping out music artists by having ‘Featured Music’ and ‘New Artists’ sections in the application.
But in July 2000, a U.S. District Court ruled against Napster, stating that it had actively contributed to copyright infringement. In a different case, Metallica had sued Napster after the unreleased track, “I Disappear”, was leaked on the platform before its official release.
Many fans actually sided with Napster, feeling that Metallica had become out of touch and lost its way. But by March 2001, courts ruled that Napster had to block all copyrighted music from being shared on its platform.
Napster tried to comply by filtering copyrighted songs, but it was an uphill battle. As soon as one copyrighted song was removed, it’d be uploaded again by another user. And by July 2001, Napster had to shut down entirely.
Napster tried a relaunch in 2022 but it didn’t work out and ultimately the company filed for bankruptcy. But the industry had been pushed in a direction where there was no turning back. Other platforms such as Kazaa and LimeWire sprung up, and there was public backlash against those trying to prevent the music industry from adapting.
This ultimately led to the subscription services and ad-revenue generated streaming of music that we see today on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
Today, Napster is a music streaming service with a subscription model. It no longer holds the cultural significance it once had, but it’ll go down in internet history as the program that forever changed the music industry.
