The Role Of Napster In 2001

Napster is widely known to be one of hte pioneers in peer-to-peer filesharing software that emphasised in sharing music files encoded in the .MP3 format. It was developed by Shawn Fanning, John Fanning and Sean Parker and operated between the dates of June 1999 and July 2001. Napster was believed to be so influential and special as in was one of the first widely available and easily accessable P2P filesharing softwares around and becuase of this quickly grew in size with records showing that Napster at its peak had over 25 Million users sharing over 80 Million songs, the technology backend that also powered Napster was something that made it special as even though it was the first of its kind Napster was still one of the most robust systems created never crashing once even with over 80 Million uploads over its service.

The responce to Napster from both Arists and Comsumers varied significantly over the course of the systems life. Consumers from Napster reaped the benefits of the system and once the ball had started rolling the number of files being downloaded exploded in size, and due to the rise of broadband internet people were able to now download as many of these files as they wanted. But many artists on the other hand felt completely different about Napster, after finding out that many of their new songs and demos had been leaked all over the internet they set out to shutdown these files being leaked at the source which of course led them to napster. The biggest example of this would be Metallica who after finding out the a demo of their soon to be released song "I Disappear" had been leaked on napster compiled a list of everyone on the service who they believed to be sharing thier music, after this they handed a 60,000 page document of the users and demanded that they be banned and that it be made impossible for a metallica song to be shared over Napster, after this many other artists followed suit and sued Napster for copyright infringement and Loss of earnings. But many artists spoke out publically and defended Napster saying that it was a great tool and can be used for promotional uses. A big example of this would be Radiohead and Dispatch, Radiohead had never had a song in the Top 20 Chart but after their experimental album Kid A got leaked on napster the album shot to Number One when it was finally released. Dispatch on the other hand were an indepedant band but due to their music being shared legally over Napster to over 25 Million users they became the first ever independant band to ever Headline the Madison Square Garden.

Napster was later forced to shut down in order to comply with the injunction that was issued on March 5th 2001. On September 24 2001 Napster partially settled the case and agreed to pay the rightsholders $26Million for unauthorised sharing of music and a further $10Million for future licence royalties. Napster then tried to convert to a Subscription based service but ultimately failed and filed for bankruptcy on June 03 2002.