“In a way, Napster won.
(John Fanning did not respond to multiple requests from the Guardian to speak about his time at Napster.Richardson was planning a per-track download model – “a dollar a song” – echoing the $0.99 track price that iTunes would offer in 2003.
That case—A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc—wended its way through the courts over the course of 2000 and early 2001 before being decided in favor … From a consumer point of view, it opened up music to the whole world in a completely liberated way.”The battle with Napster also instilled an image of the music business as grasping and arrogant. Fri 31 May 2019 05.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 31 May 2019 21.06 EDT. Spotify has just passed 100 million paying users (of 217 million users in total); the record business is now back to a £15.15bn ($19.1bn) value last year, though still only half of its 1999 peak.Arguably, Napster’s true benefit was clearing out industry dead wood . “Obviously, that is not the case, but that image still haunts us today. “We definitely talked about [whether] this was legal or not,” she recalls, but Amram referenced the landmark Sony Betamax ruling from 1984 on home copying to try to allay fears. Rolling legal action against it since December 1999 hobbled its growth and the resulting legal bills drained its resources. Napster would connect you with other users who had a copy of that song, and then allow you to download it.It was an industry-destroying genie, and Napster was the spell that released it from the bottle forever. EMI’s Capitol imprint was the first major to sell a download version of a single, Electric Barbarella by Duran Duran, in 1997. None of these defences worked and record executives spent four or five crucial years losing serious business to Napster before Steve Jobs came along with the iTunes Store.“It's my contention that record companies could have avoided much of this had they been smarter about dealing with Napster – if not licensing content to it directly, then doing a better job of creating a competing, cost-effective service rather than just stonewalling and treating the Internet as a threat.”Drummer Lars Ulrich (L) of Metallica testified before the US Senate on music on the Internet in 2000 (Credit: Getty Images)Napster was the beginning, but by no means the end of the digital revolution.
“But timing is everything, right?” The company filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2002 and the assets were eventually sold to Roxio. “While it was active, Napster anticipated what eventually came to pass – a combination of Apple/iTunes, YouTube, Spotify and social media, all of which dominate how we discover and consume music today, he says. “We didn’t condone ruthless piracy, but this seemed to be much more of a fan-based phenomenon that had grown to tens of millions of users.”Helen Smith was director of business affairs at AIM and, alongside Wenham, negotiated the deal on behalf of the indies. Fanning met an ambitious teen, Sean Parker, on the webchat channel w00w00, and together they triggered a series of events that brought the record business to its knees by making music discovery instant – but payment optional. EMI’s Capitol imprint was the first major to sell a download version of a single, Electric Barbarella by Duran Duran, in 1997. “We had spreadsheets that covered a conference room table, trying to work out what the business model could be,” Barry says.
“Even today, the music sector are perceived as control freaks, living in the old world and trying to hold back innovation,” says Smith. For PlayStation 4 on the PlayStation 4, a GameFAQs message board topic titled "So all these years later, did the Metallica vs Napster lawsuit matter".