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Shawn Fanning Interview
peter303 writes "The Wall Street Journal (via MSNBC) interviewed Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster.
Shawn talks about the end of Napster and his personal plans."
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A very good article. I think if anything Fanning will be remembered for jump starting the p2p revolution, getting the attention of the RIAA who had obviously underestimated the power of technology, as well as bringing awareness to a lot of average consumers on certain unfair aspects of the way the 'music industry' works, and last but not least introducing a lot of us to a lot of wonderful, independent music. Anyone know where he's working these days? The article didn't mention it.
From what I've read radio faced a similar problem of music licensing, only at that time the issue was the licensing of copyrighted classic music recordings. The solution was to open a new genre of music, pop music.
However, this would have required Napster's founders to have actually done some work that they probably didn't want to do, such as interacting with social classes of people who were ignored by the mainstream. But that's just not what people who want to only have clean hands programming want to do. Too bad, Napster blew the biggest opportunity in this generation to dominate a new medium.
Let be honest here. Getting single tracks off P2P networks works pretty well.
But, I would just love for someone within the RIAA (or BPI - UK version) to actually sit down with a list of 5 albums and try to download entire CD's.
It's barely possible. The chances of finding 10 tracks in the same album which aren't badly encoded, labelled wrongly or sampled at 96kbps is extremely high.
Now that doesn't mean that what is happening is ant the less worse (after all, it's a free for all sharing of copyrighted material than many people do not already own) but personally I think that it's only really single sales which are damaged as much as the RIAA/BPI make out to be.
Getting all the tracks of an album decently encoded is bording on the impossible most of the time.
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Yes. Price-fixing is a felony. Shoplifting a CD isn't.
No you're not. Downloading a song off the internet is, at its worst, making an unauthorized copy. The law allows for that under some circumstances. If you send it to cassette tape, then you're covered by the AHRA...
I have an immense respect for Mr Fanning. Here's a guy that quits school to try to write code on his own and changes the world. You think the word is too strong? Everybody remembers the Napster days. People burning CDs like crazy, sharing rips of old albums, live concerts, weird one-of CDs picked up in cut-out bins. I made my best compilations during that time. I received awesome CDs from my friends, packed with stuff I had never heard. A guy at work started making CDs with kids songs. Another made the most hilarious Christmas songs compilation. These were people that had almost no interest in music before Napster arrived. I could go on and on... I miss Napster. Every day.
Thank you Mr. Fanning.
there's no place like ~
WSJ: Compact disc shipments fell 7% in the first six months of this year.
A 7% drop? That's it? Wow, they're doing amazingly well in these tough times. The company I work for (different industry) dropped about 50% in sales.
Actually it's my fault record sales dropped. I used to buy CDs like crazy from those "10 CDs for $.01" deals. Now I just buy used, unless one of my favorite artists just comes out with a new release, or I can't find it used. That rarely happens though.
The newer artists I favor are an acquired taste, so they are common in the "Used" section. Also, that section is where I purchase bands I never heard of before, and I have yet to be dissappointed. So, it works both ways.
As for the older artists, they rarely come out with something new. The only new CD I bought recently was Dio "Killing the Dragon" which was released this year. This guy has been performing since at least the 50s, and concentrating on the Metal genre at least since his experience with Black Sabbath in 70s. (I say "at least" because nobody knows how old he is). My point is that many of the artists I favor are retired or dead, and therefore are not spitting out new recordings any more. This particular case is an exception.
In conclusion, people like me see the "New" CD shelves as no more than obsticals between the door and the "Used" shelves/bins (which often, though not always, are found in the back of the store). It's really the best "Under $5" I can spend (and sometimes as low as $1.99 or even $.99).
New sales from me have dropped at least 95% in the past decade. Feel the burn.
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And in my case who are also discovering (and buying) a load of tracks by people they'd never heard of before.
In the few months I've been using p2p socftware, my CD collection has doubled. The CD's I'm buying now are stuff that I've always been looking for, but could never previously find..
Some albums I've bought after downloading them:
You would never hear any of those on mainstream radio. Thanks to p2p, I have discovered them, bought them, and hopefully given the artists some royalties.