Earlier today I pulled my HD from my year 2000’ish computer and was happy to find I was able to retrieve all sorts of nostalgic data. Most notably, loads and loads of MP3’s from Napster at it’s height.
It’s apparent now that digital downloads of music was the future, but I remember alot of pushback at the time. (primarily because it was all being traded for free).
With 23 years of hindsight, and a time traveling Delorean, can you think of any specific moves he could have made to where maybe there ended up being an alternate 2023 where Napster is on everyone’s phone and we all get our music there and he’s in the billionaire club?
Take a look at music sales over time. and now ignore the purple blob at the end which was about 15 years away in terms of technical feasibility.
The music industry was on the verge of a financial bloodbath, and the peak music download revenues would have been beaten by CD sales all the way through 2010 or so.
It’s possible Napster could have been the first Apple Music, and indeed Napster came back as a legitimate platform, in name at least. But I don’t think they had enough to offer the music industry at their peak of physical media sales to get them to even begin to care about digital downloads. It took a company as big as Apple for that, and even then the recording industry quickly realized that giving Apple exclusivity was a big mistake.
I don’t think there were any decisions Fanning could have made that would have turned Napster into a long term successful and legitimate business. The music industry was not willing to listen.
If he had gone to them and said there was a demand for downloadable music they would have either laughed at him, believing he was wrong, or recognized he was right and been terrified.
There were a few attempts at legitimate streaming. As mentioned, later Napster, also maybe Real Audio, others? None of them were too successful.
The music industry definitely could have made different decisions that would have let a legitimate Napster be long term successful. I think it is much more likely that if music labels had recognized the potential of digital sales, that instead of Apple dominating later legitimate downloads, it would have been the record labels themselves dominating. I’m sure it would still have concentrated the money with the labels instead of the artists.
If the courts had decided that Napster (and similar) did not infringe copyright, because it was the end users making the copies, or something, then Napster the software company might have been successful selling something which people then used to infringe copyright.
To sum it up, if things outside Fanning’s control had changed, and he was able to take advantage of them, then Napster could have been successful, but I don’t think there is anything he could have done to make it successful.
During the Napster thing, before I realized how wrong it was, I had an interaction with Roy Orbison’s niece and her lawyers. I was notified I was being sued and over the course of back and forth emails I actually chatted with the offended party, Roy’s niece.
I apologized for downloading and sharing his music and we chatted about some other things. The complaint was dropped.