Napster – The first world champion of free music downloads – วิวัฒนาการของ P2P Application ตอนที่ 1

ย้อนกลับไปกว่าสิบปีก่อน คนที่เล่นอินเตอเน็ต และชอบฟังเพลงในรูปแบบ mp3 คงมีน้อยคนนักที่จะไม่รู้จัก “Napster”
ในสมัยนั้น Napster เป็นแหล่งค้นหา และดาวน์โหลดเพลงฟรีที่ดังมากๆ วันนี้ผมขอมาเล่าถึงประวัติย่อๆ เกี่ยวกับ Napster นะครับ

History

• Napster was founded in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker at age of 19 !!

  

• Napster was specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files
• Napster was presented a friendly user-interface
• In February 2001 Napster hit global use by 26.4 million users

Kunttz  What were/are you doing when you were/are 19? I celebrated the UEFA Champion Leagues with Man.Utd. and had no idea what to do in life….

How the old Napster worked?

• Friendly user-interface and easy to use just
• Opened Napster Utilities
• Search for the song you wanted
• Napster Index Server provided the list of the Napster client which had that song
• Click “Download”

Legal Challenges

• New songs leaked in Napster network before they were released
• Filing a lawsuit by
  • Metallica
  • Dr. Dre
  • Madonna
  • Etc.
• A&M Records and others sued Napster in 2000
• Napster lost the case
• Could continue its business with non-infringing uses
• Shutdown its service in July 2001
• Bankrupt in 2002

Here and Now

• Napster was acquired at bankruptcy auction by Roxio, Inc.
• Purchased by Best Buy, Inc. at $121 million
• Business Model Changed
• Get Free Stream songs up to 3 times each
• After that (if you like that song) you have to
  Purchase the track
  Or
  Subscribe with Napster
  $5 Gets You 5 MP3s and Unlimited On-Demand Streaming Music

Thank you for reading until this line ^^… This was part of my MBA study.