What Ever Happened to Napster? From MP3 Rebellion to Streaming Blueprint

[Julio Franco]

Napster made digital music feel limitless for the first time, then vanished in lawsuits, rebrands, and sales. Its name faded, but its ideas still shape how the world listens.

Read the full article here.

What Ever Happened to Napster? From MP3 Rebellion to Streaming Blueprint

 

[GeoffreyA]

Great reading. Goes to show, one can't kill an idea...

 

[Hysc84]

Nice article

But Napster give birth to torrent software as well and they still exist today

 

[tonylukac]

I don't think Napster was bad. Artists used to get a penny a song royalty. If they sold a million songs they'd only get $10,000. Thanks to Napster they have YouTube streaming for .2 cents a stream. Some artists get 2 billion streams, which says they get $2 million at present.

 

[AnilD]

Napster didn’t “kill” the music industry, it basically showed everyone what the future should look like 10 years early. Then the industry spent a decade fighting it instead of building Spotify themselves.

 

[jbright]

It’s kind of funny that the thing people loved most wasn’t even the piracy, it was the interface. Search a song, click download, done. Turns out convenience beats ownership every time, which is exactly why streaming eventually won.