Napster 1,600,000 tracks. All the music you want, any way you want it.
Napster members can listen to and download an unlimited amount of
full-length tracks. Search for your favourite artists, discover new
music and get the latest releases as soon as they come out. Members can
choose from over 50 advert-free radio stations and create custom
playlists to share with friends. Members can also enjoy Napster on your
home stereo. It's Fast, Safe and Legal.
Shawn Fanning along with volunteer Sean Parker first released the original Napster in June of 1999 while Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston. Fanning wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, ran all aspects of the company's operations for the first year from their office on Nantasket beach. The final agreement gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. It was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provided, while actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a friendly user-interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download.
Although the recording industry denounced music sharing as equivalent to theft, many Napster users felt justified in using the service for a number of reasons. Many believed that the quality of new albums had decreased by the mid-1990s, with the typical bestselling album containing only one or two good songs bundled with many low-quality "filler" songs. Additionally, the price per track had greatly increased as an increase in the overall price of CDs was coupled with a decrease in the number of tracks included with each CD. People praised Napster because it enabled them to obtain hit songs without having to buy an entire album. Napster also made it relatively easy for music enthusiasts to download copies of songs that were otherwise difficult to obtain, like older songs, unreleased recordings, and songs from concert bootleg recordings. Some users felt justified in downloading digital copies of recordings they had already purchased in other formats, like LP and cassette tape, before the compact disc emerged as the dominant format for music recordings.
Irrespective of these justifications, many other users simply enjoyed trading and downloading music for free. With the files obtained through Napster, people frequently made their own compilation albums on recordable CDs, without paying any royalties to the copyright holder (which was usually one of the big record labels). High-speed networks in college dormitories became overloaded, with as much as 80% of external network traffic consisting of MP3 file transfers. Many colleges blocked its use for this reason, even before concerns about liability for facilitating copyright violations on campus.