I thank you for coming. We are all here to mark the passing of a benchmark of human experience, a friend to most and an enemy to some, a soothsayer for the future. I speak, of course, of Napster, 1999 - 2011. Rest in Peace.
We come, however, not to mourn Napster's death, but to celebrate its life. It is near impossible to overstate the impact, both good and bad, that Napster has had on the music industry, and indeed on modern culture in general. To fully comprehend Napster's effect on life, one must examine the events leading up to its creation.
Music was once the exclusive province of the wealthy. In order to learn to play an instrument, one had to have access to that instrument. A lute was easy enough to make, and anything could be struck to create a rhythm. But going into the Renaissance, one had to be rich enough to buy an instrument, rich enough to afford a teacher, or rich enough to attend concerts to even experience music. (There is a scene in the film "Gosford Park" in which a gifted piano player is a guest at a party, and he sits to play. In the shadows around the room, we find practically the entirety of the waitstaff huddled, rapt by the music and enjoying the rare treat.)
Rudimentary attempts at recording sound began in the 1700s, with wax cylinders. Later, Edison would make waves by inventing the phonograph, thus bringing music into the home. The invention of the radio made music accessible to many homes. The record and the disc jockey became vital elements to experiencing music.
Vinyl records gave way to audio cassette tape. With the birth of the boombox and the walkman, music was now mobile. More importantly, however, music recording was in the hands of the common man. A radio/cassette player and a blank Maxell could enable the listener to record a song directly off the radio, making that song his to listen to whenever he wanted to. What's more, studio recordings purchased on tape or vinyl could be recorded onto blank tape, in whatever sequences the listener desired. Would-be boyfriends rejoiced when they realized they could show off their musical tastes to girls through the fabled and legendary "mixtape." The recording industry, however, lamented the technology, predicting doom for their archaic system of paying performers to record, and selling those recordings for a premium.
The collapse of the industry predicted never occurred. The medium was imperfect, a copy not being as sharp as the original, and a copy of a copy being worse still. There was another wave to this invasion of the recording industry on the horizon, however, and that wave went by the name "personal computer."
After tapes, compact discs hit the market with an explosion. The digital encoding of the sound brought a clarity and precision that was vastly superior to tapes and (yes, damn it) vinyl. Alongside the rise of the compact disc was the rise of the PC. If the sound was being encoded onto discs with computers, that same encoding could be pulled off and stored as files on a computer. Then came the personal disc burner, with which one could make a copy of any compact disc onto another compact disc. Because the information stored on the disc would not change in the slightest (unless them shits was scratched, which happened more often than I'd like to think about), what resulted was a precise copy of the original sound, with no degradation of quality.
The recording companies again cried foul. The efforts of the industry to curb the copying of music were widespread and, as we are about to see, ineffectual. Methods were developed to protect the information on the disc, preventing it from being uploaded into a computer. FBI seals were affixed to CDs, warning of copyright infringement and its subsequent penalties. This, however, did not stem the tide of copying and sharing.
There was one frontier left to music, and that frontier was the internet. One was always able to share information between two people on the internet. However, with the advent of Napster, the scale of such would increase exponentially.
In 1999, there existed forums where one could post information in the form of photographs, video, computer software, and music. These were, however, populated mostly by people who had a more comprehensive knowledge of computers than your average net surfer. Napster put together an interface that was a) dedicated solely to MP3 sound files and b) easy for anyone to use. One simply had to search for a word, and every file with that word would pop up. Depending on the speed of your internet connection, you could have virtually any song recorded ever within seconds. Then, you could burn that song onto a CD and have it forever. Or, as I did in college, you could simply play it through your speakers during parties.
This was revolutionary. Picture the California Gold Rush, when thousands poured into northern California looking for gold. However, picture all the gold being in a pile. Picture you walking up to the gold and throwing all of your gold into the pile. However, your gold was still in your pocket. You'd just made more gold and threw it in the pile. And you could fill your pockets with all the new gold from the pile that you could carry. Now, imagine that instead of California, it's the internet, and instead of gold, it's "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young, "Fields of Gold" by Sting, and "My Adidas" by Run-DMC.
The recording industry flipped. And this time, probably rightfully so. Lawsuits were filed. People were arrested. You'd here stories of young children being charged with felonies carrying sentences that would amount to their entire lives, simply because they'd downloaded the latest Britney Spears track.
The artists themselves even got into the mix. Lars Ulrich of Metallica famously sued Napster for distributing Metallica music for free, causing a huge backlash amongst their fans. (In response, Napster and Limp Bizkit teamed up to form a free tour, featuring opening acts Cypress Hill and, hilariously, Alcoholica, a Metallica tribute band.)
Napster eventually changed to a pay service, and though its true death has happened today with Napster's purchase by Rhapsody, its spiritual death was way back when it started charging its users.
But Napster's legacy lives on. There are now user-friendly interfaces for photographs (Flickr, Google Image), videos both illicit and not (YouTube, YouPorn), and even music (Lala [RIP], Grooveshark). There are still places on the internet where you can copy music illegally a la Napster (Pirate Bay, BitTorrent).
I'll always remember Napster as being there for me when there would be parties in the dorm room in that halcyon fall of 2000. We'd be enjoying our drinks, and the speakers would be blaring. Someone would say, "Hey, do you have that new Nelly track?" I'd just smile and say, "Not yet." And seconds later, there it would be, like magic.
Rest in Peace, Napster. Your memory lives on, as does my burnt copy of Rage Against the Machine's "Battle of Los Angeles."
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