The digital music revolution started with Napster – the file-sharing service dreamt up by two teenagers in 1999. As a new film tells Napster's story, Tom Lamont recalls the incredible sense of liberation he felt as a young music fan, one of millions happily plundering the world's record collections…
By the summer of 2000, Napster had dramatically expanded and about
14,000 songs were being downloaded every minute. Fanning was a star,
sought out at a tech conference by two little-known developers, Larry and Sergey, who told him how much they envied what he'd built. When Time magazine put Fanning on its cover in October 2000, an accompanying article gushed: "[His] programme ranks among the greatest internet applications ever, up there with email and instant messaging."
But
the truth was that, for Napster, terminal rot had set in. Sean Parker
had been quietly, hurtfully ousted from the company after an email was
unearthed in which he referred to file-sharers as pirates, something
Napster's lawyers were always careful to deny. Shown the door, Parker
asked Fanning for help, but his friend was so weary and disillusioned
that he only said: "You're lucky. You can go and do something else."
Before long, Fanning left too.
Napster had lost its zest.
Rudderless and haemorrhaging relevance, it began a series of doomed
manoeuvres. After the court-ordered shutdown, bosses flirted with the
idea of reinstating free sharing, but with music that had the lo-fi
quality of radio. They gave away free MP3 players. A UK collaboration
was announced with Dixons, never the sexiest brand, and by the time
Apple was ready to launch its slick iTunes Store in Britain, Napster had
a new tie-up – with the Post Office.
