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Napster Execs Resign, Company Appears to Teeter

Posted by timothy on from the no-income-will-do-that dept.

renard writes: "The NYT is reporting that five top executives at Napster, including founder Shawn Fanning and CEO Konrad Hilbers, resigned yesterday. This occurs in the wake of their Board's rejection of the latest buyout offer from Bertelsmann AG - as Hilbers says, `I am convinced that not pursuing the offer is a mistake.' Could this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service that changed everything?"

26 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Revolutions Outlive Pioneers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Napster as a company is irrelevant.

    The P2P architecture pioneered by Napster is what matters.

    Just like 3dfx (which is no longer) revolutions outlive pioneers.

    1. Re:Revolutions Outlive Pioneers by stain+ain · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In fact, I think Napster deserves some credit.
      Agreed, it didn't start the music-sharing thing: before CD-Rs and MP3s we all had double decks.
      It didn't start the MP3 revolution either: way back before Napster, lots of people were already encoding MP3s (L3enc first then Fraunhoffer and Xing...) and sharing with friends, normally using burned CDs but also with some useful useful FTPs, where one had to enter 'hidden' directories until the music could be found.
      And it didn't even start P2P, because it is not a real P2P service...
      But still, Napster deserves lots of credit, because it is the single thing that started the revolution, for its simplicity of use, bringing many users that were not computer geeks to the world of music sharing. It is, in a word, the service that made MP3 sharing popular, and now that it is popular, it will remain that way forever, no matter how hard they try. Cheers for Napster.

      btw, if you want to read about what is p2p and what is not, check this.

  2. Company Appears to Teeter by billnapier · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's just hope it doesn't totter as well!

  3. More info... by scrm · · Score: 3, Informative

    here and here.

    --
    ---- scrm
  4. Shawn Fannings CV by bodin · · Score: 5, Funny

    And for those who wants to hire Shawn, his CV
    is published at todays gnuheter:

    http://www.gnuheter.com/article.php?sid=1486

  5. Why Bother? by TheNecromancer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why should I buy Napster when I just downloaded it from Kazaa??

    --
    Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
  6. Napster haiku by supabeast! · · Score: 4, Funny

    Napster spent millions
    Only the lawyers got rich.
    H. Rosen smiles.

    1. Re:Napster haiku by ObviousGuy · · Score: 3, Funny

      When I was your age
      We had software called Napster
      Before the Dark Times.

      --
      I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
  7. Why is this a surprise? by SkyLeach · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The courts killed their market and technology. Napster has been history since that ruling, barring an upset by the Supreme Court, which hardly seems likely.

    --
    My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so :-p
  8. In other news... by Night0wl · · Score: 3, Funny

    One boy in South Dakota crys at the loss. Hilary Rosen decides to use one of her four remaining orgasms to celebrate. Next expect use, 2024.
    Rest of population, doesn't really give a shit. Grandmother unavailable for comment.

    --
    Computational Madness in a round package.
  9. duh! by GutBomb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Could this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service that changed everything?

    I thought it ended a long time ago. we already knew it wasn't going to come back in any way shape or form like the good ol' napster.

  10. Napster was already dead by wackysootroom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Napster has the distinction of being the first company slain by the serial killer known as the DMCA

  11. The whole problem with Napster... by Disoculated · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...was that they tried to control the content that they were distributing from day 1. If they had been a generic file sharing service, instead of just music, they'd never have been liable for any damages to the RIAA's members... everything would have been in the hands of the upload/downloaders. Sure, they might have had some weird injunctions/warrants to deal with, but they could have claimed all innocence on what was being traded.

    Does anyone have any idea why they did that? It cost them dearly, but I've never understood why they made that distinction. Was it to keep porn off the network? Was it to brand the service? What the hell were they thinking?

    1. Re:The whole problem with Napster... by dinotrac · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >Does anyone have any idea why they did that?

      I imagine because it gave them an identity and it gave them a role to play. At some point, they surely were planning to cash in.

      Besides, if you know what you're indexing, it's easier to make special purpose software that is tuned to the content. Or, rather, it's easier to do that if the law doesn't shut you down.

  12. Re:It's funny, laugh by scott1853 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think thats a pretty good analysis based on some facts from the article like they still had 70 employees and that Fanning was the CTO. Personally, I don't know of anybody that became a CTO right out of college (or by dropping out of college). Although based on previous articles about the company, it was probably just a token title anyways.

  13. Oh, my by Scooby+Snacks · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This isn't intended to be flamebait, but watching Napster now is like watching someone you once knew who was vibrant and healthy who is now just lying there on life support. It's morbid really. Someone needs to have the courage to just pull the plug.

    Fare thee well.

    --

    --
    Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
  14. Dead but refused to admit it... by supercytro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There was little point in maintaining the company anyways... from a business perspective, the company possessed little which couldn't or hasn't been engineered elsewhere.

    Arguing from a brand name perspective also falls apart as it has been damaged in the eyes of the market and consumers in a number of high profile media reports.
    Many of the original millions of users had no intention of contributing financially and have since moved on to other products... it was mainly a way for them to leech music.

    This meant that it effectively was running at a loss with little chance of making money from past 'customers' or attracting new customers. The company possessed little valuable assets and legal cases as well as monetry concerns was killing it off slowly.

    The biggest surprise was how it has managed to survive this long...

  15. infighting and greed by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    just idle speculation, but it sounds like it sounds like you have infighting between various factions, such as idealists, business types, and some folks who are now facing the music about becoming another dot-bomb. No one likes being bought out by another company. I can imagine the board room scenes as it spins out of control.

    I hope people were able to salt away money as a cushion for their future.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  16. Good for Them by kawlyn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The NYT mentioned that one of the reasons the executives were stepping down is that they wanted to make sure that there was enough money in the pot so that the employees could get paid. If this is for real that's great. It's nice to see the executive of a company acting in a responsible fashion.

    Having said that, this also makes me kinda optomistic for the future. The future where all the old dinosaurs that are running the world now finally retire, and get replaced with people that have a clue.

    --

    When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
  17. "Early days of the Internet"? by Scooby+Snacks · · Score: 5, Insightful
    By letting people exchange music at no charge, Napster exploded in popularity. That engendered the ire of the record industry even as Napster helped shape the early days of the Internet.
    Where's this reporter been? Let's see... Napster came along about 30 years after the "early days of the Internet". What gives?
    --

    --
    Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
  18. How to make black markets grey by e-gold · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Directly tip/pay musicians (I've said how ad-infinitum here, so I won't repeat my whole rant now). It's not hard to break the payment-system bottleneck and cut out the middlemen, I've been selling the tools for YEARS...

    http://101574.clicktwocents.com tips me with my favorite kind of money if you've got any (and around here, I give the stuff away!) but I have 0 musical talent. The Radiators are quite good, though.
    JMR

    --
    Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
  19. Karma Police by CaffeineAddict2001 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Napster was great.

    If every musicians in the world went broke from napster, I would still think it was great.

    There would be other incentives besides money to create music and life would go on. Maybe there wouldn't be so much of it, but is that such a bad thing?

    If I were a musician, of course I'd be pissed, just like anyone else who chooses a profession thats core business model has become obsolete.

    I'm sure this post is short sighted, poorly thought out and doesn't consider the massive effect entertainment has on the economy.

    I don't care and neither did the thousands of napster users who were told by the recording industry that they needed music in order to live.

    The music they forced down the throats of our generation is what encourages this attitude, now they reap what they sow.

  20. Napster was MP3s for the AOL crowd. by ErichTheRed · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Remember back before Napster existed? Most people traded MP3s and movies on secret FTP sites. Napster's role in the file sharing market was to extend it out to the masses who couldn't figure out how FTP clients worked. Granted, they made it much easier to find music, but when the AOL crowd gets wind of something and tells their friends, and one of those friends is a reporter or an RIAA worker, then the whole house of cards comes down.

    The legacy Napster did leave behind is the other filesharing networks (Kazaa, etc.) That's good. However, the genie's out of the bottle, and those services are next.

    Time to fire up the ol' FTP client and Usenet reader...

  21. Very good comment by interiot · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I think boingboing summed it up very well:
    • When Napster was getting off the ground, the labels pooh-poohed it, basically taking the position that anything that got built by average users, ripping their own MP3s, adding their own metadata, serving off their own PCs with their own network connections would suck. Only a centralized system could deliver "High Quality Content," because every file on the network would be vetted and served by a Responsible Grownup from the labels.

    • The new, BMG-owned Napster was very much a Responsible Grownup proposition. Responsible Grownups would centralize the files, take them out of that greasy-kids-stuff MP3 format and put them in a Responsible Grownup format with "rights management" that would curtail your ability to format-shift, time-shift and repurpose the music you downloaded. The system really looked like it was going to brutally suck.

      So I can't really feel too sad for poor old dead Napster. Death was the best it could hope for now. Dead, its name can remain synonymous with revolutions; had it lived, its name would have been synonymous with crap.

  22. teetering? by mosch · · Score: 4, Funny
    Napster Execs Resign, Company Appears to Teeter
    If by 'appears to teeter' you mean 'fell into a bottomless abyss in 1999 and is still screaming, praying for the end', then i agree, it's teetering.
  23. Lest we forget by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bertelsmann poured in excess of $85 million into Napster (that they've declared), and they're getting none of it back, because the fucked up control freak DRM-infected new-Napster technology that it paid for is utterly without a market. That money is gone, burned, buried.

    Now... where are they going to recoup that $85 million from? Pay cuts for their executives? Hmmm, I think not.

    That $85 million is coming from two places. From their artists, and from us.

    You have a think about that the next time the RIAA tells you that you're stealing from artists, and that you'll suffer in the long run. Bertelsmann paid $85 million to come up with a worse system than one 19 year old college dropout knocked up in his spare time. And we're going to pay for it. No doubt they will spin that so that their incompetence becomes our fault for using Napster in the first place.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.