What Is Napster?

Created in 1999, then 19 year old Shawn Fanning developed an application allowing people to share music on the internet without purchasing CDs. Users were accessible to music recorded in an MP3 format from other users who were online concurrently. Users typed in a name of an artist or song and received a list of what was available, they can then download the music from the other user's hard drive.

Impact On The Internet

The invention of Napster sparked a decline in the music industry as it enabled the illegal download of music that would previously have to be paid for. This forced the music industry to develop digital distributions and streaming technology which could have been done far earlier. This brought about at present time, the ease to access recorded music through streaming instead of paying for each album.

Dr Dre And Napster

A controversy between Dr Dre and Napster involves Dr Dre suing Napster's creator claiming that the program enables copyright infringement. Dr Dre demanded a letter to Napster to ensure that its users were not trading his music. In a statement from Dr Dre's lawyer Dre Dre said "i don't like people stealing my music". Court papers from Dr Dre exclaim that "Napster has built a business based on large scale piracy".

Companies bigger than Napster

Since Napster, the number of music streaming applications have expanded significantly. The top apps/companies being Amazon Music(Amazon), Apple Music(Apple), iHeartRadio(iHeartMedia), Pandora, SoundCloud and Spotify.