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The Rise and Fall of Napster
Jedi Paramedic writes "Boston.com has an interesting story about the rise and fall of everyone's favorite file-swapping service. Also the subject of a new book by Joseph Menn, the story goes into great detail about the unfortunate-but-heroic Shawn Fanning and his reluctance to admit that his uncle, who in the end masterminded little more than the lining of his own pockets, had taken advantage of him. From getting screwed in the original 70/30 split with his uncle to his uncle's refusal to loosen his iron grip on the company even at the expense of its very being, the article (and the book) go a long way in chronicling the rise and fall of Napster, and crediting Shawn for not airing the family's dirty laundry. An interesting and well-written read."
Its too bad Napster had to do music sharing. The technology between P2P networks pionered by Napster was something though. This type of network along with open souce and GPL software, along with MD5 checksums could be a great combination.
The two "spotlight reviews" on Amazon are interesting.
Can anyone explane how Napster made money? AFAIR there were no ads on the site or in the client (save the cdnow link that was in later versions of napster). It obviously made some kind of money, however, because I remember hearing about how Shawn Fanning made a lot of money.
It was there before napster, especially on IRC, napster just brought it to the masses with a pretty interface. If napster didn't do it another program would have. The idea and technology were already there, napster didn't really do anything innovative that wasn't already happening.
-- iCEBaLM
You're right. It more like someone using your patent to build widgets, then not paying you a licensing fee.
Audiogalaxy was doomed to failure from the start though. It used their website to show which files were available. In essence it ended up becoming a warez site.
"men. I would be WAY more than willing to shell out $20 a month to have AG running the way it used to. The fact that it was "set and forget" was the best thing going for it. I never liked Napster either, but AG did it right. Too bad the record companies are too stupid to see a VIABLE SOURCE OF INCOME when they see one. Dipshits. "
For $10 a month you could use Listen.com. As long as ya pay that, you have access to any song of their library. plus playlists etc. It's like a server-side MP3 locker, only they're all there. Click a song and you're listening to it within moments instead of having to wait for it to download. (then it caches so it's not like you go through that every time...)
Not a bad deal. It's not quite perfect in that you don't get to keep the compressed version and it's Windows only. Oh well, it's not for everybody. Still, $10 is less than one CD per month.
I'm thinking about writing up a review of it for Slashdot, but I'm concerned about whether there'd be any interest in it.
"Derp de derp."
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"So if I hire you and allow you to work for me for two weeks, but then deny you a paycheck, I haven't stolen anything from you, have I?" this is not theft, its breach of contract. major distinction.
tasty electronic music vittles
Furthurnet has (twice? three times?) removed all Phish shares because some moron put up a disc or two Phish was selling from their website. Everything on it is supposed to come from tapers trading shows where the bands authorize audience taping. Some good stuff, lotsa hippies.
Sure, both were innovative but I doubt either would exist as the did/do now if it wasn't for IRC coming first. To an end user Napster was little more than an IRC network that gave file sharing priority over group chatting. ICQ is IRC with a foundation of individual chat instead of group chat.
Though that may be an oversimplification.