
Napster: A New Killer Internet App (1999) - airstrike
https://evolt.org/node/564
======
toyg
Napster is the future of the internet. It _will_ come back. But the world has
to evolve on a social level before this can happen.

We saw the same with the printing press: the Powers That Be first banned it,
then tried to control it, and eventually had to relent. It will happen with
data sharing too, eventually. It might take a century, but it will happen.

~~~
kristianc
> We saw the same with the printing press: the Powers That Be first banned it,
> then tried to control it, and eventually had to relent.

All of those phases have already happened - banning (RIAA lawsuits), control
(iTunes), relent (Spotify). We've reached the endgame - it's streaming.

If you want to store and maintain a personal 128GB collection of MP3 files
with incomplete titles and data, that's your prerogative, but you're going to
be in a tiny minority.

~~~
general8bitso
Must be nice to have a high bandwidth connection with 5 nines uptime, no risk
of your account being revoked, or the content licenses abrogated or expired.

It is of the utmost importance to inculcate the newest generation of media
consumers that renting is preferred to ownership.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
I slogged through keeping a local archive of my carefully-ripped audio
collection on a hardware RAID-5 storage server for decades. When I finally
gave up in favor of Google Play (and subsequently Apple Music), it was
liberating.

At the end of the day, the "content" we're talking about here is purely
entertainment. You can live without it. And even if the hammer falls, and the
copyright holders go backwards, things like Napster and Limewire and eDonkey
will rise again.

At 10 years old, I never understood the line in SW EPIV, where Leia says, "The
more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your
fingers." (Seriously, the line haunted me for years.) But it's a perfect
allegory for this situation.

Of course, I'm still waiting for the blowback against Facebook, so...

~~~
licebmi__at__
I had the exact same experience, but then about 2 weeks ago, one of my
favourite albums got deleted of All Music. So I had to search the disc, rip
it, and then upload it to my account, which works for now but certainly put a
dent in the experience.

Let's see how it plays out on the future.

~~~
leviathant
>Let's see how it plays out on the future.

Exactly as you'd expect. Aphex Twin had a CD that included the video on the
data portion of the CD (I think it was Windowlicker, circa 1999) - but you had
to unlock the video online. After a couple of years, the server shut down, and
you no longer had access to the video.

Of course, someone released a crack, and eventually the advent of YouTube
negated that particular problem.

I still keep local copies of my music. Part of this is because I have a not
insignificant amount of music that I listen to that is not and might never be
part of a subscription service. Part of it is because I've experienced early
attempts at controlling access to music and video that I purchased, and saw
how that failed, and I don't plan on risking that loss again.

------
eternalny1
I was the author of MP3 Fiend, which was doing really well back in 1999 (CNET
5-star Editor's Choice). Then Napster came along.

While I appreciate that its 1999 interface was just as ugly as mine, what I
didn't have was P2P. And obviously, that was the "killer technology".

~~~
lunchables
Interface looks great to me. I know what every single piece of the UI does
immediately.

------
cmollis
Napster. Worked there in 2000 and 2001. It was surreal (at least for me) to
work at a place that was always in the news at the time. I can understand how
employees at Faang must feel at times. Not a total distraction but it’s there.
Napster was an interesting place.

~~~
jimothyhalpert7
How good a job did Justin Timberlake do in portraying Sean Parker?

~~~
cmollis
Only saw Sean Parker in a meeting once (and I don’t believe I was ever
introduced) so, difficult to comment on that. My sense is that he was more
involved at the beginning of the service. I got involved around the time
Bertelsmann made the investment in the company.

~~~
cmollis
I guess technically it was a ‘convertible loan’. Whatever.

------
cecilpl2
> I've used it mostly for finding obscure or impossible-to-find music. I mean,
> where else are you going to get a copy of The Mr. Belvedere Show theme song?

This is a nice reminder of just how much things have advanced in a short 20
years.

In four mouse clicks and under 5 seconds, I was watching _the video_ for it.

Select -> Right click -> Search with Google -> Click.

~~~
kristianp
YouTube solved the problem of piracy enablers getting sued out of existence.

------
VikingCoder
I wish Mesh Networks were a bigger thing. I wish that casual P2P over them was
a thing. Music. Books. Pictures. News. All spread by just walking around,
gathering content that matches tags you subscribe to.

~~~
xj9
there are a lot of people working on various aspects of this. hopefully
something usable will be available in the next couple of years.

[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/)

[https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki](https://www.open-
mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki)

[https://heropunch.io/Tracker](https://heropunch.io/Tracker)

------
Tepix
I remember launching Napster for the first time. Millions of popular and
obscure songs at your fingertips. It was exhilerating to experience the power
of peer-to-peer.

The genie was out of the bottle.

~~~
gonesilent
Tooth paste out of the tube is what Gene Kan tried to coin for it.

------
napo
"if the recording industry knew about this, they'd probably shut it down."

~~~
expertentipp
Well Lars must had read the article.

------
ds0
Since my genre of choice is dance music, I use Soulseek, which I think has
done a great job of carrying Napster's torch.

The trouble is that many of the tracks I'm into come from the personal
collections of assorted DJs or diggers on Youtube, so obscure tracks are often
in poor quality: I've had to resort to using Discogs to purchase the original
vinyls and recording them through a sound card. I am not yet a pro at
digitally cleaning up some of the minute crackling that occurs, and buying a
brush to clean the records hasn't helped much...

~~~
lostgame
>> I've had to resort to using Discogs to purchase the original vinyls and
recording them through a sound card. I am not yet a pro at digitally cleaning
up some of the minute crackling that occurs, and buying a brush to clean the
records hasn't helped much...

Source: vinyl junkie, vinyl DJ, professional audio engineer and girl who
presses her own vinyl here in Toronto - You really have to acetate wash your
records and only use the highest quality gear. There's little you can do
beyond that. If a record is messed after you acetone it, unfortunately
removing the crackle sounds is kinda going in and modifying the original sound
itself. You don't _really_ know what else you're getting rid of.

I use a Pioneer PLX-500 which has a built-in USB. I generally get an extremely
low level of noise especially off of new LP's.

~~~
CharlesW
> _There 's little you can do beyond that._

Depending on how much you want to spend, some flavor of iZotope RX will let
you de-crackle and perform other types of audio restoration in a very
transparent way.

------
lostgame
The nostalgia for this UI/UX is astounding. These were truly golden days of a
sort.

~~~
flukus
This seems like something that would be held up as an example of why
programmers shouldn't do the UI but I think I'd hold it up as an example of
why they should.

Those buttons along the top look like an early implementation of tabs or a
stack switcher that are common today. The search interface doesn't infantalize
the user. I bet if you changed the windows theme it would match as well.

------
wires
> It's a true community sharing all their music.

That's the point. Sharing is caring. Also this is what culture is about... not
about the pop shit we get shoved in our face all the time. If anything, mp3
sharing made me buy more records (12" vinyl), not less.

~~~
moate
Counterpoint: I hate having to track files on a hard drive, love pop music,
and could never be bothered to buy a physical piece of media ever again. Don't
yuck my yum, I think that's a better point.

------
0db532a0
Can anyone explain the T1, T2, T3 classification of internet speed? Back in
the day, I don’t remember it being used where I lived.

~~~
DanBC
I remember seeing them a bit, but not knowing what they meant. I've found this
which explains it a bit.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier)

> The most common legacy of this system is the line rate speeds. "T1" now
> means any data circuit that runs at the original 1.544 Mbit/s line rate.
> Originally the T1 format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division
> multiplexed speech signals each encoded in 64 kbit/s streams, leaving 8
> kbit/s of framing information which facilitates the synchronization and
> demultiplexing at the receiver. The T2 and T3 circuit channels carry
> multiple T1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of 6.312
> and 44.736 Mbit/s, respectively. A T3 line comprises 28 T1 lines, each
> operating at total signaling rate of 1.544 Mbit/s. It is possible to get a
> fractional T3 line, meaning a T3 line with some of the 28 lines turned off,
> resulting in a slower transfer rate but typically at reduced cost.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
The T1 users were like internet royalty to us dialup users back in the Napster
days. I often pondered where they must be to get such an amazing connection
(Universities, I assume). Now even in rural England I get a reliable
connection that's over 50x faster. Even mobile is faster than that. How times
change.

~~~
porpoisely
I remember being on dial-up as a kid back then and being insanely jealous that
kids in college got T1 connections in their dorms. One of the reasons why I
wanted to go to college as a kid was the blazing fast internet speed.
Downloads that took hours for me, took seconds for them. It sounded like
heaven to me back then.

~~~
function_seven
I went to a state school that hadn't completed networking their dorms. Even at
school, I had to use dial-up to get my email (using Pine through a VMS). My
girlfriend at a different school had high-speed access in the dorms.

I remember making the 2 hour trip to visit her, and half of my excitement was
all the music I could download once I got there.

I show up, and find out she hadn't connected her computer yet! First priority
of that day was going to the campus bookstore to buy an ISA network card and
10Base2 terminators and connectors.

------
buboard
Got to remember mp3. THAT was the killer tech that enabled everything.

~~~
lunchables
Before that we used real audio files. I remember downloading so much music via
.ra files on IRC via XDCC. Back then it was a great choice because we were
still using modems. The quality was basically AM radio level, but the files
were tiny so the trade off was worth it.

~~~
daveslash
On my 28k modem with my Win 3.1 machine, I relied pretty heavily on MIDI
files. I had a good collection Greenday, Nirvana, and movie theme songs (Ghost
busters, Jaws, Jurrasic Park, Spaceballs, etc..) Oh, and I recently discovered
that browsers no longer even support MIDI files.... yes, I _recently_ tried to
create a webpage that would play music on load, don't ask me why...I'm just an
awful person sometimes.

~~~
lunchables
I'm hugely nostalgic for the early web, I don't blame you at all.

If you've never seen it, this is worth scrolling through:
[https://www.cameronsworld.net/](https://www.cameronsworld.net/)

~~~
daveslash
Thank you. That was amazing. The dancing girls especially made me reminisce
(of my 13 y/o days). My parents never knew that I installed some secret
dancing-girl thinger on the home-computer. I constantly wonder, and struggle
with, how the internet impacts my 14 y/o stepdaughter in ways of which I'm
unaware.... and how to approach it.

------
forgotmypw2
written by metafilter founder mathowie

~~~
tclancy
About Napster and on evolt, the whole thing was a nostalgia bomb as soon as I
clicked the link.

------
adem666
What an application. I will download right away and try too.

------
borski
“I could go on and on about how I feel mp3's promote the sales of CDs, but
that's an argument for another day.”

Yeah. That worked out. ;)

------
davio
I was always amazed by the old jazz recordings that were never released on CD
but were on Napster. Somebody cared enough to convert vinyl to mp3.

------
FahadUddin92
'killer app.' I heard that was the term 'Bill Gates' was also asked about
during his hearing in the Gates vs USA case.

