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Napster Documentary: Culture of Free | Retro Report | The New York Times | The New York Times | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Napster Documentary: Culture of Free | Retro Report | The New York Times
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Core Theme
Napster's revolutionary peer-to-peer file-sharing model disrupted the music industry by offering free access to music, fundamentally altering consumer expectations and forcing the industry to adapt to digital distribution and new monetization strategies.
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college students are making good use of
the internet the latest software makes
it a bit too easy for students to access
their favorite
Tunes the main challenge was can this
thing scale to a massive number of
users and I just thought okay if this
piece of code works this is going to be
huge and I had a moment there where I
asked myself is it morally
correct technology is advancing this is
going to happen anyway you have a
generation of people now who expect
their music for free don't care how it
is I've got good intentions it's very
in 1998 at Northeastern University a
freshman sha Fanning began developing a
computer program called Napster in his
dorm room he asked for help from Ali
idar a veteran programmer he knew
through his uncle and my response to him
was you need to just concentrate on your
studies Fanning didn't follow Ali's
advice he dropped out to focus on the
program and partnered with fellow
teenage programmer Shawn Parker to
release a beta version as it started to
spread through chat rooms they traveled
to the Bay Area to grow the business
initially I was skeptical that gosh I'm
sitting across from 28 or 19y olds I
changed my tune once I learned that
there are already 40,000 people using
this thing it was one of the first large
scale peer-to-peer file sharing programs
it allowed users to access music files
stored on the hard drives of fellow
Napster users 40,000 wasn't a big number
but it was bigger than what I thought it
was going to be initially which was Zero
because people weren't willing to open
up their hard drives what I realized was
that people's emotional ties to music
their general interest in music was more
than enough to overwhelm any kind of
security or privacy
concern and in the '90s consumer
emotional ties to music equaled big
money no one baded an eye when Puff
Daddy's record label made two music
videos featuring elaborate helicopter
chases in consecutive
years only the CD boom was from 84 to
2000 you actually had to drive your car
to the Tower Records and buy a CD for
$18 to get the one song you liked and so
that was a good model it made the
industry tons and tons of [Music]
[Music]
cash selling millions of chumba W albums
with one good song was an economic boom
that was pretty much the end of that era
because very soon afterwards Napster
really took hold in the Public's
Consciousness and the consumer realized
that they could get the music that they
wanted to hear for free it was on
college campuses with highspeed internet
that Napster really took off in the fall
of 99 so uh how many MP3s do you have on
your computer about 600 maybe like a 100
or something uh 6 or 7,000 Napster
Napster Napster it's called old file
sharing seen by some as the wave of the
future it was very exciting we knew we
were building something that was going
to be big ladies and gentleman creative
Napster Sean Fanning when I first heard
about Napster I recall my impression
having two different elements one
being this is incredible it's
revolutionary and things will never be
the same again in the music industry and
the other
being this is going to destroy the
recording industry no longer do you have
to go to a store and plunk down money
and so months after napster's rise the
recording industry began a long legal
battle to stop it they're waging a war
in the courts over who controls what
artists create we've heard that we
couldn't survive before when we had
700,000 members and when we had 17
million members we felt pretty strongly
that digital distribution was going to
bring the industry closer to its
customer and in instead of killing it
they would take advantage of the value
that it brought but to record companies
whose artists range from Tony Bennett to
Metallica this new technology in the
wrong hands is simply stealing business
model built on infringement is not only
morally wrong but legally wrong at the
time the recording industry Association
of America was reporting about $15
billion a year of Revenue in the us
alone anybody with enough money could go
and make a record but didn't guarantee
you getting into stores which was the
only place that you could actually buy
that record that was the power of the
music business the distribution sell it
the issue made its way to Capitol Hill
Napster hijacked our music without
asking a chorus of studies show that
Napster users buy more records as a
result of using Napster Hank Barry a
lawyer came on to act as CEO as the
fight intensified we were trying to
negotiate with the labels we were trying
to fight the court case and trying to
keep the system working all at the same
time we had a limited amount of time to
make that happen and we just didn't get
that done within the period of time that
we that we had the free music service
run by Napster was ordered to stop the
music in July of 2001 after more than a
year of legal battles the internet
startup which at its peak had about 70
million registered users shut down its
entire network in response to court orders
orders
we accurately estimated that the courts
would say you just don't have the right
to give away all this stuff and so we
were perhaps a little smug and confident
in the belief that the courts would say
it's not that and people would stop
doing it we didn't really factor in
the consumer
adoption the youthful lack of respect
for copyright and the
anonymity com would combine to make it
pretty Unstoppable as a model the
industry may have crushed Napster but
the idea had taken hold and a flurry of
other downloading Services took its
place it's free and it's easy and you
know it's wrong yeah but a lot of people
do it pretty much everybody does
desperate to stem the tide the labels up
the stakes and sued almost 20,000 people
for using illegal downloading software
legally downloaded music is the same
thing as going into a CD store in the
city but CD sales continued to plummet
shuttering record stores across the
country an industry in turmoil so when
Steve Jobs came to the table with plans
for a new online music store the major
labels finally surrendered the thing
they had fought so hard to maintain the
distribution you had only two choices
either you don't do a deal with Steve in
which case people continue to just email
the mp3s to their friends or you do a
business with him and he has a store and
then you can sell things things this
week Apple computer launched its iTunes
music store and they are hoping that
this is an answer to some of the piracy
that is going on online over the next
several years digital sales boomed more
than billion songs but today even the
iTunes model is threatened by the
shifting Sands of music distribution
download sales are declining as online
streaming services like Spotify gain
popularity and as the industry reels
corporate Brands see marketing opportuni
with the energy drink company Red Bull
even starting its own record label who
knows 5 years from now if anybody's
going to buy music anymore but maybe
they are streaming it which you see on
the Spotify and and the YouTubes of the
world those those numbers keep going up
and up and up a recent study found that
the most popular way for 12 to 24 year
olds to discover new music is the online
video website YouTube it used to be that
the only way that you could do this free
music sampling was through downloading
illegally now there's other ways to
sample music for free consumers also use
YouTube to upload and share music some
of which they don't own the rights to
when YouTube first started my view was
that it was actually worse than Napster
this should
be easy to shut down but after legal
challenges the company emphasized its
efforts to try to stop infringement
offering in the copyright owner the
chance to take a video down or run ads
against it the growth of Music on
YouTube has been 100% organic and driven
by the community by artists by fans the
part that wasn't organic was YouTube's
partnering with the music industry to
enable the usage of copyrighted Works
some in the music industry say the
money-making potential of YouTube has
yet to pay off for many artists but
today the industry is largely embracing
online platforms and their communities
as a form of distribution that can't be
ignored and they are not the only ones
many many records are made by people in
their garages basements or bedrooms and
the distribution is there they'll make a
video they'll stick it on YouTube and if
[Music]
it m lemore and Ryan Lewis jumpstarted
their career without a record label when
their video went viral on YouTube you
have artists like M lemore who was able
to reach millions and millions of fans
before getting to radio he would have
had a very difficult time achieving that
if you were to rewind back to the
9s for many others streaming services
hurt their bottom line royalties are
small fractions of what artists once
made from sales and some musicians have
had to Grapple with this new reality
more than [Music]
[Music]
others I I haven't seen much money from
record sales Spotify and Pandora and all
that stuff is great but again the amount
of money I received from that is very
small we're really very happy to be here
with Miss Emy L Harris Robert Ellis is a
singer songwriter who's released
critically acclaimed albums and tours
with the likes of Willie Nelson and Emmy
Lou Harris in the last few years we've
been on the road pretty much non-stop I
think we did 290 something days last
year I would say touring represents
probably 100% of my income when I was a
kid if I had told myself what I was
doing now I would think that I'd be
making a lot more money than I am
yeah music is as important if not more
important than it's ever been I think
the challenge is of finding ways to
monetize that importance Napster might
have hurt recorded music sales but it's
the respon responsibility of the
industry to figure out how to extract
their value out of each generation this
happens in every industry the Rocky
Mountain news published its final
Edition Blockbuster Video is no more
borders is going into liquidation music
was the first industry that really had
to confront the idea of free content
music was at the Forefront of it whether
it liked it or not [Music]
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