Napster, the pioneering file-sharing service that almost destroyed the record industry, turns 20 this month.
Music journalist and author Steve Knopper joins RNZ Music to discuss the lasting effect it's had on how we hear music.
Photo: RNZ / supplied
In its heyday, millions of people across the globe used Napster to download music. And why wouldn’t you? A free service containing almost every song you could think of, and many you didn’t even know existed.
It was almost unthinkable to music fans in the late 90s. Yet, there it was.
Napster was launched on June 1st 1999, by two American university students – Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker.
It wasn’t the first place on the internet that people could get free music, according to music journalist and author Steve Knopper, but it made it a lot easier.
“Shawn Fanning decided he'd create an interface that let people trade mp3s quickly, easily and in a much more centralised way, with a little bit of what we now call social media attached.
“In addition to being this incredibly powerful and interesting and revolutionary new piece of technology, it’s also theft. It’s also piracy, so the record labels all said ‘we can’t have this’.”
In the late '90s, the record industry was riding high on the profits from high-priced CDs and was completely unprepared for what was coming.
“If you wanted that one good song that you'd heard on the radio, you had to go and spend 15 to 18 American dollars on a CD to get it. And the music industry liked that system.”
“It was hubris. They didn't see it coming. They didn’t see the technology, and when they did, they took every step they could to blot it out of existence.
“There’s not a lot of Steve Jobses in the music business.”
Napster Screenshot Photo: Njahnke
But before all the big record labels got together to close Napster down, a meeting took place that, had it gone differently, could have changed the course of the music industry entirely.
“There was a moment where all the record executives met with the top Napster executives to try and make a deal: the labels would either buy Napster outright, or license it, or in some way work together.
"They all got in a room with Shawn Fanning and his uncle [Napster's then CEO] John Fanning. John did not have a reputation for being the most reasonable guy. He hated the record industry and was a pretty vindictive character.
"They all got in a room together and were prepared to make a deal but in the end, it ultimately collapsed because everyone backed out."
The record industry then launched a huge lawsuit against Napster and on July 11 2001, Napster closed it’s network.
But of course the cat was out of the bag by that point. The millions of people who'd been getting music for free, from the comfort of their home, were not going to go back to buying CDs from their local record store.
The solution was a compromise: The iTunes store.
Napster co-founders Sean Parker (left) and Shawn Fanning. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Launched by Apple in January 2001, iTunes was the first large store for digital music. It meant that consumers could still access tunes without having to buy CDs, but that the record labels could continue to charge for their product.
That this new platform came from a well established and reputable technology company also appealed to music executives.
“Steve Jobs had a superstar personality and he was the type of character that record labels were used to dealing with”.
The record industry had failed to embrace the internet and had paid the price for it. Even with iTunes in place, piracy continued and the record industry’s profits languished.
Only in recent years has piracy diminished, which Knopper puts down to the rise of Spotify and other streaming services.
“[They] said that if you have a free streaming service ... people will find that easier to use than using Google or whatever to download files.
“Obviously there’s a difference between renting the songs through streaming and owning them through downloading, but the bet that Spotify made was that people wouldn’t care so much about that distinction over time."
The record industry has seen a big rise in profits over the last few years due in no small part to the deals labels have done with streaming services.
“People just wanted the music for free and when they got it for free in a legitimate way through Spotify, there was no need to pirate music anymore.”
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