Does anyone still use napster

The band had even provided Napster with a list of names and IP addresses. On the 10 th of May, , Napster eventually deleted , user accounts. Interestingly enough, not all artists were campaigning against the platform. Chuck D, frontman of hip hop group Public Enemy or the rock band Limp Bizkit publicly came out in support of the company, stating that Napster helped them to increase awareness of their music. In order to fight off these lawsuits and to keep the business running, Napster went out to raise its first public round of funding.

Hank Barry, a former lawyer, and partner at Hummer, was appointed interim CEO of Napster to bring more legal expertise and legitimacy to the company. A few weeks later, in June , Napster hired David Boies, the attorney who has represented the United States government in its antitrust case against Microsoft in the early s, to defend the company in its lawsuits.

Interestingly enough, the ongoing lawsuits did not seem to affect its growth. In order to appease judges, Napster began to tout a significant change to its platform. It stated that it planned to charge users a monthly subscription fee in order to access the files. Music labels would then get a share of that income, depending on how often their files had been downloaded.

In February , the U. Federal appeals court confirmed its ruling from July that deemed its filesharing software to be engaging in the exchange of copyrighted materials and therefore violating copyright laws. Unfortunately, the labels did not accept that offer, forcing Napster to remove all copyrighted material.

They went ahead and hired 50 temps to form an editorial team that, with the help of software, would scour the platform off of any illegal files. As a result, the average number of files shared per person dropped from in February to just 21 in May of the same year. A month after the ruling, Napster had already lost a quarter of its 60 million users. As a result, on July 1 st , , it shut down access to the software. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, later that month, ordered the service to remain offline until it could figure out a way to keep the illegal files off.

Around the same time, Napster had also settled its lawsuit with Metallica. On the 20 th of July, a U. His replacement became Konrad Hilbers, a former executive at Bertelsmann. In the coming months, Napster continued to battle lawsuits while trying to legitimize its business. In October , it had to lay off 15 percent of its workforce equal to 16 employees in an effort to keep the business afloat.

The ongoing negotiations with the remaining record labels furthermore led to the delay of the launch of its subscription-based product. In the meantime, Napster continued to lay off employees while sourcing more loans from Bertelsmann. Then, on May 17 th , , Bertelsmann announced that it had acquired Napster. The transaction, furthermore, allowed Napster to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Konrad Hilbers, who just a few days prior announced his resignation, as well as founder Shawn Fanning, decided to remain with the company.

In September , a federal judge decided to block the acquisition, thereby forcing Napster to sell off the remainder of its assets. Two months later, in November, U. Roxio, which became known as a creator of CD-burning technology, had big plans for Napster.

That relaunch occurred a few months later in October It then tried to turn the service into a subscription model, but the lure of free music was too much.

Music sales tumbled as result. What Napster did more than anything, Knopper says, was to correctly identify that the future of music was online, and not in racks of metal and plastic. That lengthy waiting period almost destroyed the business, until streaming came to the rescue years later. Napster, weighed down with legal bills, struggled to survive; in June it filed for bankruptcy and its assets were later liquidated. The Napster name was eventually taken by music provider Rhapsody, who now trade internationally under the Napster name.

But in its wake came YouTube, iTunes and Spotify, digital-only environments that changed the way we consumed music. Importantly, all of them — either through subscription, adverts or licensing — deliver money back to the music labels. Would the music industry have had to survive a less damaging decade if it had embraced Napster instead of seeing it as an enemy?

Tom Maxwell. Napster filed for bankruptcy in amid legal difficulties. Founder Shawn Fanning is pictured.

JOHN G. Discover Membership. Editions Quartz. More from Quartz About Quartz. Follow Quartz. These are some of our most ambitious editorial projects. By Dan Kopf Data editor.

Published August 28, Last updated on August 30,