Napster Guide: History, Origin, and More

Looking back to 1999 brings us to the story of Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, who didn’t know exactly how at the time, but they would change the music industry forever. The release of their app, Napster, completely revolutionized how we listen to music. The wildly popular software allowed users to share and download music encoded in MP3 format for free. As a result of Napster’s introduction, the streaming music industry today owes some of its success to the story of Napster’s rise, shut down, and rise again.

The Biggest Facts of the Napster Story

• At its peak, Napster had 80 million registered users, mostly students on college campuses. It was so popular that some schools burned it to avoid network congestion.
• Shawn Fanning, the developer of Napster, conceived the idea at 18 while in college after hearing his roommate complain about the difficulties of downloading music online.
• On October 2, 2000, Time magazine declared Napster one of the top-ranking internet applications, alongside email and instant messaging.
• Napster favored music lovers more than music sellers. The years following its release saw a massive drop in CD sales. Between 1999 and 2009, CD sales and licensing dropped by $8.3 billion.
• While Napster was growing and becoming popular, it became entangled in lawsuits and prolonged court battles over the distribution of copyrighted materials, which resulted in its shutdown in 2001.
• Although it didn’t last long, Napster left a mark. It changed the way we purchase, listen to, and share music. As a result, the record label industry diversified into digital marketplaces and subscriptions of music services and introduced a way of buying a single song rather than the whole album.

Napster: The Visual Story

One of the most fascinating tech stories of the last few decades, Napster’s story shows how easy it is to ruffle the music industry and change it forever. Napster helped popularize peer-to-peer music sharing, and the company’s story is one of fascination. To say that it became an overnight success would be putting it mildly.

As the video from Company Man shows, the idea that Napster could be downloaded for free with access to millions of songs was incredible. Of course, everyone knows how the story plays out, which the video pays careful attention to, as it took just six months for Metallica and Dr. Dre to file lawsuits against Napster.

Unsurprisingly, the video gives the impression that much of the streaming industry today can attribute its success to the Napster fiasco. There is a definite argument to be made that downloading music online gave rise to today’s most successful players, such as Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, and TIDAL.

What is Napster: Explained

Napster is an audio streaming service owned by MelodyVR that allows users to share music online. Its creators, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, launched Napster on June 1, 1999. Fanning intended to create a system that would make music sharing instant and free—and he successfully did.

Napster quickly attracted users, and by the summer of 2000, 20 million were on board, and about 14000 songs were downloaded every minute. The same year, Fanning and Napster were featured on the covers of two of the most popular magazines—Newsweek and Time (see the image below).

At its peak, the estimated number of registered users was 80 million, and it was massively popular in colleges to the extent that some schools had to ban it to ease network congestion. 

Napster’s success was, however, short-lived because it was caught up in a string of lawsuits over copyright infringement, which drained its coffers. First, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIIA) filed a suit against it almost immediately (in December 1999), then the rock band Metallica in April 2000.

An injunction was issued in March 2001 ordering Napster to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on its network. In July 2001, Napster shut down its entire network to comply with the injunction. In September 2001, the case was partially settled. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for past unauthorized music uses and an advance against future licensing royalties of $10 million. Napster attempted to convert their free service to a subscription system to pay those fees. Thus, traffic to Napster was reduced.

Although the original service was shut down, it paved the way for decentralized peer-to-peer file distribution programs, which had been much more challenging to control.

Napster: Release History

Napster was the brainchild of a 19-year-old US computer hacker, Shawn Fanning. He aimed to develop a system to make sharing and downloading music easy and free. He imagined a solution to help users access music files without relying on a centralized server. His drive to revolutionize the record industry pushed him to drop out of college to concentrate on developing the code for his system.

Shawn Fanning later met his cofounder Sean Parker in a chatroom, and the two collaborated to push the Napster idea. Fanning fine-tuned the code while Parker worked on securing money from investors. On June 1, 1999, Napster was officially launched as a peer-to-peer file-sharing network.

Although similar networks facilitated the distribution of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. This made it acquire users within a short time and become more popular.

How to Use Napster

Unlike the music streaming services we have today, such as Spotify and iTunes, which you can access with a mouse, Napster has a relatively different way of distributing MP3 files. The songs live in users’ machines rather than a centralized computer system. This means you download songs from other people’s machines, the distance notwithstanding. Here is how the original Napster worked: First, you must download the software and mark the directory containing your music files as “shared” to make it accessible to other Napster users.

Then, you would connect to the Internet, fire up the Napster software, and type the name of the song or artist you are looking for. Napster would then log you into the central server, which kept all the online users’ indexes. Whenever a match of your requested song is found, Napster will inform you to connect with the system hosting the file to download it for free.

The Difference Between Napster and Spotify

While both are music streaming services, they differ in many ways. Napster started as a cataloging system that stored MP3s in the hard drives of registered users and allowed them to share and download songs for free. On the other hand, Spotify is a streaming service that allows easy and instant access to music and podcasts.

Napster’s music library, an online music store, has around 60 million songs. Spotify prides itself on a vast music catalog of over 70 million songs, including podcasts.

In terms of music discovery, Spotify has the best algorithms, allowing independent artists to reach a wider audience within a budget. Napster does not have as many extensive selection algorithms and would not be ideal if you are looking for a refined mixtape of fresh music.

Napster provides the highest streaming quality of 320kb/s on mobile apps, but users can only download songs at 192kb/s on PC. On the other hand, Spotify allows users to switch from low to very high streaming speed, which is 320kb/s, and a download quality consistent with the current bitrate.

The Lawsuits Come Quickly

However, Napster didn’t last long. Not long after its launch, various organizations sued Napster over copyright infringement. Napster’s facilitation of the transfer of copyrighted material (songs) raised the ire of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which almost immediately (in December 1999), filed a lawsuit against it. In April 2000, the rock band Metallica sued Napster for copyright infringement.

An injunction was issued in March 2001 ordering Napster to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on its network. In July 2001, Napster shut down its entire network to comply with the injunction. In September 2001, the case was partially settled. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for past unauthorized uses of music and an advance against future licensing royalties of $10 million.

Napster attempted to convert their free service to a subscription system to pay those fees. Thus, traffic to Napster was reduced. Although the original software was shut down, it paved the way for modern decentralized peer-to-peer file distribution programs. Today, users can still access Napster services through their official website.

The End

While it certainly feels like Napster’s story ended just as soon as it began, its legend lives on today. Not only are the names Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker etched in tech lore but there are also millions of memories of college students who gleefully clogged up their college networks to download the latest music.

Fast-forward to 2024 and Napster has been bounced around the tech world, including ownership from popular brands like Roxio, Best Buy, and Rhapsody. Today, Rhapsody has the Napster brand in both the Android and Apple App Store, where it can provide more than 110 million streaming songs for $13.99 a month for individuals and $19.99 a month for families.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©360b/Shutterstock.com.