Napster

1099 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Some effects of piracy on music industry

Napster

Napster creates a threat to the music industry, which includes Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and well-known musical groups, because it diminishes their distribution control, record sales and lowers their profit. The music industry must continue to take legal action against Napster to eliminate its negative impact.

Last year a nineteen year old college student attending Boston's Northeastern University was sitting in front of his computer screen with a challenge, a challenge to create a way of downloading music off the Internet faster (Graham 1D). The nineteen year old solved the problem and created software that would generate a worldwide conflict. This nineteen year olds name is Shawn Fanning creator of Napster.

Fanning's software became very popular among his college friends. He stopped going to classes and he spent all of his time working on his software. His uncle then noticed how popular the software was becoming and loaned money to Fanning to start an online company (Graham 1D). Nineteen-year-old Fanning gave his software the name Napster, because he had nappy hair when he was younger and "Napster" became his nickname as a child. (Graham 1D.) Napster officially started June 1, 1999.

Napster can be explained as a file-sharing program also called peer-to-peer sharing. Napster links music off of people's computers and permits other Napster users to recover them from whomever might be connected to the Internet at that time (Graham 1D).

Napster has been nothing but a success in the eyes of many. USA Today author Jefferson Graham explains, "To its fans, Napster is the greatest radio station in the world, a place to pick up new music for nothing" (Graham 1D). Napster has taken the MP3 technology of compressing music files loaded on computers hard drives, and used it to its benefit. We can download MP3s in less than two minutes (Gibeaut 39). This aspect is very appealing to the fast moving generation of today.

Chaos rose when Napster provided free music to virtually everyone. The idea of free music exploded among college students. Downloading is even easier from inside a dorm room because colleges are on networking systems, which means instant Internet connection. Unlike a modem that has to connect every time we sign on the Internet, a network is always connected to the Internet and runs very fast. This networking factor destroyed the music industry's distribution to college students.

Show More
Related

  • Illegal P2P File Sharing

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    About 5 years ago Napster, a network software application, was being used to download music files. The network was growing faster than anybody who ever started it would have imagined. When artists, songwriters, and all of the other people involved in making CD's realized that this wasn't going to slow down any time soon, they decided that they needed to stop Napster. Little by little, Napster was being less used and it became harder to find the songs wanted until nobody used it anymore. When all of this was happening, other applications were made available. Kazaa and Grokster are probably the two most used Peer to Peer, or P2P file sharing networks you can find, although there are many others.

    Read More

  • The Napster and Grokster Cases: Differences and Similarities

    883 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the text A Gift of Fire, Napster “opened on the Web in 1999 as a service that allowed its users to copy songs in MP3 files from the hard disks of other users” (Baase, 2013, p. 192, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). Napster was, however, “copying and distributing most of the songs they traded without authorization” (A Gift of Fire, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). This unauthorized file sharing resulted in a lawsuit - “eighteen record companies sued for contributory infringement claiming that Napster users were blatantly infringing copyrights by digitally reproducing and distributing music without a license” (Communications Law: Liberties, Restraints and the Modern Media, 2011, p. 359).

    Read More

  • Online Music Distribution In A Post-Napster World

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this case, there are three main effects of Napster on the recording industry. The first one is that it caused a large decline in record sales in a short time. According to this case, the spending on recorded music in U.S dropped 4.1% in 2001 and the industry’s top 10 albums also sold much less compared to the year before. The second effect is that it cased the sales of CD burners, blank CDs and digital audio players increase and nowadays, most new computers come with CD-RW drives installed, which means people can easily store downloaded music, share music with friends and take it with them anytime as well. The third effect is that it increased the cost of recorded music. Once people can download free music through peer-to-peer software services, they have less incentive to buy original editions, which will make recording industry spend more to fight against copyrights and invest more in new artists and new music. Overall, these three effects make the recording industry go through a hard time.

    Read More

  • The Napster Controversy

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    Napster does not condone copyright infringement, there is no opportunity in the software to stop this, or for royalties to be paid to the song belongs to. The reaction from recording artists, record labels and other music industry players has been varied, but primarily anti-Napster. The first action to be taken against Napster was by the band Metallica. In April of this year, they sued Napster Inc for copyright infringement.

    Read More

  • BMG Entertainment

    1384 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Internet, by making free and non-free online distribution of music, has profoundly affected how business is conducted in the record industry in terms of distribution channels, copyright and the economic structure of the major players in the global market. Initially, the Internet was viewed as an opportunity by some of the major players as a new channel of promotion. However, after the existence of Napster and few others, the majority considered it as threat because of the increase in the free file sharing. Consequently, for the Internet to be an opportunity for the major players, they had to adopt new business model in terms of distribution for online customers while keeping their conventional distribution channels. Early response to this threat was searching for technological solution in order to prevent piracy, going to court to sue for copyright infringement, the five major players and others offered their own authorized online distribution joint venture, all in attempt to keep their power in the market.

    Read More

  • Napster

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    A maker of MP3 portable players said "The year 2000 is a fantastic year for digital music,we had this earthquake called Napster who's aftershocks are still happening". Napster gives publicity to unsigned groups and gives people a chance to listen to their music and so possibly they may get a record deal form the record companies.

    Read More

  • MP3

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    What is the hottest buzzword around the Internet today? What topic has replaced ‘sex’ as the most searched for term on the web? The answer to both of these questions is MP3 audio.

    Read More

  • iTunes

    1298 Words  | 3 Pages

    The iTunes Store, originally the iTunes Music Store, is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, and has been the biggest music vendor in the United States since April 2008, and the biggest music vendor in the world since February 2010. It offers over 26 million songs, 700,000 apps, 190,000 TV episodes and 45,000 films as of September 12, 2012. As of June 2013, the iTunes Store possesses 575 million active user accounts, and serves over 315 million mobile devices, including iPods, iPhones and iPads. Source: Wikipedia (2013). iTune Store. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store. Last accessed 06/01/2014.

    Read More

  • Napster

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    As I sat in front of my computer downloading my favorite song from Napster, I started to think about how hard it must have been to write a song so sublime with the way the words flow from one another, and how talented one must be to do so. I started to think how hard people work on their music for themselves and their fans, and how their fans don’t realize what they are doing every time they download a song off the internet. What they don’t realize is that it is messing over the people who worked so hard pouring out their heart and soul into their music for everyone to enjoy. They are the people who are responsible for the music, not the people who work at Napster, or any of the other shafting music networks, who are embezzling from the people we all admire for the way they can flow out those heartwarming words. These words move us to the point that we want to cry, and sometimes do. These words we listen to when we want to go off into our own little world, and think about an extraordinary moment we once had that makes our sorrows disappear. These words remind us of a passed loved one who was once forgotten, and never to be again. They are the people who put their heart and soul into their music; these are people we use so selfishly and don’t even realize how much blood sweat and tears they shed just to put out quality words. They are the people we take for granted, and they are the people who sometimes take us, their fans, for granted as well, they are the artists themselves. File sharing is what it is thought as, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as theft, music theft; most commonly know as shafting. Every day people use shafting and think nothing of it. People sit in front of their computers and go to their favorite website and download file after file with out thinking how or where it comes from. They think it is just there for the taking and it is. Shafting is a trend that has just begun, but only time will tell how far it will go.

    Read More

  • Napster: Peers To Peer File-Sharing

    169 Words  | 1 Pages

    Sean Fanning and Sean Parker originally intended for Napster to be a “peer to peer” file-sharing program. Napster changed the way we as a community shared files. Instead of going out and buying a CD from one of your favorite artist, rather you could download their latest single and create your own CD rather than buying just one CD because you only like one of the songs. Instead you were converting different music files into MP3. These changes caused the Music Industry to take a hit singles were being released before they were even suppose to come out. CD sales dropped. The Record industry became outraged, even musicians started getting fed up. When it comes to the whole Napster vs. RIAA I had no idea that it was as huge as it was. I can understand

    Read More

  • SoundCloud: A German Sartup Case Study

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ljung and Wahlforss were not the first people to start a music sharing website, or be successful starting one, but they have proved to build upon past companies in revolutionary ways. SoundCloud was founded in 2007 and became increasingly popular around 2009 (Robedhmed). Ten years earlier in 1999, Napster became one of the first websites to design a peer-to-peer music file-sharing platform, with a...

    Read More

  • Digital Distribution And Music Industry

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    The story really begins with Napster and its free software that allowed users to swap music across the Internet for free using peer-to-peer networks. While Shawn Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston, he wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster 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—directories, effectively—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 user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download. Napster became the launching pad for the explosive growth of the MP3 format and the proliferation of unlicensed copyrights.

    Read More

  • The Collapse Of The Phonography Industry In The 1920's

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    Its discovery allowed two American computer scientists, Shawn fanning and Sean Parker, to create a network that could share entire musical repertoires for free to its users, bypassing the law and copyright : Napster. This opened the door for music piracy and MP3 soon became a regular format for the consumption of music. In just two years, millions of files were shared and millions of copyright violations were made. For this reason the RIAA (Recording Association of America), the association that groups the most important American record companies, officially cites Napster in court in San Francisco. At the end of the trial in September 2001 it was ordered to immediately cease the activity carried out by Napster and a compensation of 26 million dollars to the record labels was

    Read More

  • The Effects of Piracy on the Music Industry

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    The music industry started in the mid 18th century with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through the decades there has been a great increase in this industry; however, the revenues for this industry have declined by half in the last 10 years. This has been caused by music piracy, which “is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent” . After 1980’s, when the Internet was released to public, people started to develop programs and websites in which they could share music, videos, and information with...

    Read More

  • Against Illegal Downloading

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    Napster is a company that developed the so-called peer-to-peer technology that lets people search and retrieve music files directly from one another's personal computers. When Napster first came out, millions of internet users worldwide were illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted music, videos, images, and software for free. After being vilified by the entertainment industry, which claims that Napster and any similar programs could make piracy of almost any digital work unstoppable, and many court battles, Napster was ordered by court to be shutdown in 2000. The technology has been praised as a revolutionary development for the Internet—unaware of the problems that would arise from such practices. However, the termination of Napster was not enough, months later, dozens of new, like programs were being developed and used. And since Napster, not much has been done to stop these latest downloading programs.

    Read More

More about Napster

Open Document