It’s The 20th Anniversary Of Napster
20 years ago this week, Napster was born in Sean Fanning's Northeastern University dorm room. Whatever side of the debate you're on, one can't deny that Napster changed the music industry forever. Among so many other things, Napster forced record labels to un-bundle the album in iTunes, which fittingly is set to be put out to pasture today by Apple.
"It was something that came to me as a result of seeing an sort of an unmet need and the passion people had for being able to find all this music, particularly a lot of the obscure stuff which wouldn't be something you go to a record store and purchase. So if felt like a problem worth solving."
"It is really remarkable to think about how quickly it grew. It created a level of connectedness and access that really didn't exist at the time."
– Sean Fanning to the San Francisco Chronicle
Rad and listen to their interview here.
Forced to un-bundle? Singles were regularly sold long before Steve Jobs, including eMusic 99-cent downloads 4-years before iTunes and before Napster moved to California. Napster was the illegal bullet sent to kill the (politically Liberal) music industry by Politicians and Techies alike by purposely not enforcing the U. S. Constitution guarantee of copyright. Newt Gingrich and others made such statements. “You’re asking a conservative about the economic interest of Hollywood,” Gingrich said to laughter in the audience, “I’m not rushing in.”