Napster: The Day the Music Was Set Free

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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If you were fortunate enough to be around the Internet back in the 90’s, the days of the Internet’s Wild West phase, you would have known of the origins of Napster. Napster was the original music file-sharing service that started it all back when boundary lines were being drawn, legal precedents set and freedom to do about anything on the net was being challenged. Downloaded, new documentary to be presented at the SXSW film festival will relive those early days when Napster ruled the digital music scene.

"There was no ramp up. There was no transition. It was like that famous shot from 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the prehistoric monkey throws a bone in the air and it turns into a spaceship. Napster was a ridiculous leap forward."
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I very much so loved those days. I had a T1 connection because I lived in the dorms at my college for two years. I then went almost a year on dial up when I moved into an apartment until high speed became available for the public in that area.

Between some friends and my self, we had FTP servers, FServes on Mirc, and multiple game servers. I honestly did not use Napster very much because we had such a large data base and connections, we could get almost anything directly from one another.
 
By 1999, when Napster started up, Internet use was widespread and broadband was growing at a nice clip.
 
>implying the internet isn't the wild west now
I remember the old days of file sharing, but I'm in no rush to return to them. Also, no Napster documentary is complete without Lars Ulruch. I hope he makes an appearance.
 
Those were definitely nice times. No need to worry about anything like today.

There was also a sense of happiness and excitement of seeing a download finish. It took an hour to download a single MP3. Now we just take broadband for granted.

I also remember WinMX, which came maybe a few years after Napster got shut down. That was a fun program too. Kazaa, Morpheous, those were fun too at first but they did not last very long and ended up going to crap.
 
Im gonna say that Napster revived a completely dead and dormant music industry and was shutdown as a thank you.

People could find music on there that was not available anywhere else.
 
BoogerBomb said:
Im gonna say that Napster revived a completely dead and dormant music industry and was shutdown as a thank you.
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Well, it makes sense...people got back in to the music scene because of Napster, the RIAA shuts it down, ans people still have to feed their addiction: in comes iTunes and Amazon MP3 touting extensive libraries and easy search features. Only problem, iirc, is that the RIAA was against music being sold digitally in such a fashion, as they kept their epic dipshit blinders on and wanted customers to still go and buy the physical media. Well, fuck that. When it turns out that most people I know only like a handful of songs on a complete album, it becomes a monumental waste of space and money to have a huge library composed of CDs. Haven't music sales increased exponentially thanks to digital music purchase sites and services, afterall?
 
Never used napster. We used usenet years before napster. Also back when you could first encode mp3's, the early 90's, the hot cdr to have was the goldstar 4x because of the DAC. It would take 35 - 45 mins to encode 1 mp3 and that was on a high-end PC. First CD I ever encoded was ACDC Back in Black and it took me a few days to encode it in my spare time. This was sometime in 1993, the end of or early 94'.

Btw, 2013 marks me being on the internet for 20 years. I first signed up though Databank in Lawrence, Ks, dial-up of course. Everyone at the point in time was using Windows 3.11 and winsock trumpet to dial in. All games were in dos still. Good times.
 
Heh, I still recall once my ISP used an ad of a guy saying he downloaded his mp3 in seconds when they first launched their broadband service.
 
Quicksilver_ said:
This. Cartoons in the morning were gold, but the music back then that wasn't alternate rock was worse than the crap we get today.
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Yup, Saturday morning cartoons were the best. Now theres nothing nothing at all worth even glancing. I loved a lot about the 90s but I also loathed a lot of things. Though the 90s were not as bad as now.
 
I remember napster. It was shit. Couldn't find shit on it, and sharing was unreliable.
 
Hornet said:
Heh, I still recall once my ISP used an ad of a guy saying he downloaded his mp3 in seconds when they first launched their broadband service.
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Back in 6th grade when we got ADSL, my mind was blown when I could play a song after starting a download and it would complete before the song finished...which is nothing compared to the HD streaming we have today.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Never used napster. We used usenet years before napster. Also back when you could first encode mp3's, the early 90's, the hot cdr to have was the goldstar 4x because of the DAC. It would take 35 - 45 mins to encode 1 mp3 and that was on a high-end PC. First CD I ever encoded was ACDC Back in Black and it took me a few days to encode it in my spare time. This was sometime in 1993, the end of or early 94'.

Btw, 2013 marks me being on the internet for 20 years. I first signed up though Databank in Lawrence, Ks, dial-up of course. Everyone at the point in time was using Windows 3.11 and winsock trumpet to dial in. All games were in dos still. Good times.
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Same here. I frequented the news groups. Haven't been there in years. This was way back when the [H] was very young and I mostly visited overclockers.com for rants by Ed Strilogo. I wonder how he's doing?
 
cocheese256 said:
I very much so loved those days. I had a T1 connection because I lived in the dorms at my college for two years. I then went almost a year on dial up when I moved into an apartment until high speed became available for the public in that area.

Between some friends and my self, we had FTP servers, FServes on Mirc, and multiple game servers. I honestly did not use Napster very much because we had such a large data base and connections, we could get almost anything directly from one another.
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Same here. Going from BBS's on my US Robotics modem to the campus T1 at College in 1997. What a crazy change. And then I later moved in with a couple guys after the dorms and we ended up having a T1 installed into the apartment!
 
Quicksilver_ said:
but the music back then that wasn't alternate rock was worse than the crap we get today.
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can't really agree with that, there was a lot of great music in the 90s from punk/alternative rock, electronic music (the prodigy?) etc...

the mainstream stuff was garbage though
 
FLECOM said:
can't really agree with that, there was a lot of great music in the 90s from punk/alternative rock, electronic music (the prodigy?) etc...

the mainstream stuff was garbage though
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Oh man, I forgot The Prodigy. Besides them though, most dance was unfortunately fused with pop music, and bands like AQUA or the Vengaboys make Justin Bieber sound like a normal teenager. It was also the start of autotune, which somehow made Cher relevant again.
 
FLECOM said:
can't really agree with that, there was a lot of great music in the 90s from punk/alternative rock, electronic music (the prodigy?) etc...

the mainstream stuff was garbage though
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I'm surprise anybody remember them, throw Orbital, Underworld, Future Sound of London, Fluke, The Crystal Method etc to the list :D ahhhh the memories!
 
Quicksilver_ said:
It was also the start of autotune, which somehow made Cher relevant again.
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Oh god why did I have to read that?

The strip mall where I was working (at CompUSA no less) just after high-school played Cher Believe non-f'n-stop in all stores. For about a year.

I want to hurt things when I hear that song.
 
I remember FTP sites for music and search engines before napster...and how much of a bugger they were to use.
 
Not sure I'd claim Napster as the original... I was using MIRC before Napster game out to share music (and other things) though Napster made it a LOT easier to search and download Music; MIRC had everything though.
 
LOL... I remember downloading stuff on my 56k modem and being all happy when it finally finished.

Then, ADSL came, and wow. Just wow. I could get full albuns very quickly. That was amazing.

Encoding stuff on a Pentium 133MHz, using Slackware Linux just because I had nothing better to do and making weird stuff out of old machines (486 DX2-66 as router for my home, putting the mighty ADSL on all computers!)... all while I was like 12 years old. Damn, I should've followed through a TI career.
 
Skillz you hella old like me. We used IRC to get mp3s and having your own mp3 IRC bot server was the shit back then.

bitchX user here!
 
cdr_74_premium said:
LOL... I remember downloading stuff on my 56k modem and being all happy when it finally finished.

Then, ADSL came, and wow. Just wow. I could get full albuns very quickly. That was amazing.

Encoding stuff on a Pentium 133MHz, using Slackware Linux just because I had nothing better to do and making weird stuff out of old machines (486 DX2-66 as router for my home, putting the mighty ADSL on all computers!)... all while I was like 12 years old. Damn, I should've followed through a TI career.
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Ha. I remember when ADSL came out, I was the only one out of my friends that lived close enough to a DSLAM/CO to get ADSL. Needless to say, my house became the permanent "LAN Party" house after that.

Eventually I ended up getting a Nexland Pro800 Turbo Router and a second ADSL line. Both lines were rated at 1.54Mbps and the Pro800 Turbo had dual WAN ports with load balancing. Once Napster came out, I used that for my Music (Had almost 20GB worth back then) and I used mIRC for everything else.

P4rD0nM3 said:
Skillz you hella old like me. We used IRC to get mp3s and having your own mp3 IRC bot server was the shit back then.

bitchX user here!
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I didn't really get into hosting my own servers until sometime in 2002/2003 after Napster had gone away and when mIRC became more locked down. I wanna say I was using Kazza or some crap to get stuff, but I never really used it much. Having ~20GB in MP3s kept me occupied enough. My hundreds of CDs I had in my car soon became useless to me. :eek:

PS
I'm not old! :mad:
 
P4rD0nM3 said:
Skillz you hella old like me. We used IRC to get mp3s and having your own mp3 IRC bot server was the shit back then.

bitchX user here!
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Duuuude don't mention BitchX. I had a machine (486 something) just for IRC'ing all day long on BitchX.

Is it me or it was more fun back then? Somehow you had to craft things... make them work the way you want them to.... I had this feeling when I wanted to put a HTPC together some months ago, but most things "just work" now.
 
I worked at E*TRADE back in 2000 and it WAS the Wild West. All of our computers were unlocked and we had access to what seemed like the fastest Internet connection in the world.

Napster was running on almost everyone's work computers, people in IT were setting up private drives for their friends to to store the music, CDs packed with MP3s were passed around and copied to local drives. It's was nuts to even imagine being able to do any of that nowadays.
 
Sickb0y said:
I'm surprise anybody remember them, throw Orbital, Underworld, Future Sound of London, Fluke, The Crystal Method etc to the list :D ahhhh the memories!
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You forgot Moby. Back before he became totally vegan pale white rice

In my music library i still have songs downloaded from Napster. People forget. If you didn't have a lot of disposable income to spend on CDs (which were expensive btw), the only way you got access to music was through radio or MTV. That means you were listening to whatever they felt like playing. No way to find songs from lesser known bands, or older tracks no longer played.

Of course now everything is so convenient....so convenient i actually barely listen to music anymore. Feels like I've heard it all.
 
mastaBlasta said:
You forgot Moby. Back before he became totally vegan pale white rice

In my music library i still have songs downloaded from Napster. People forget. If you didn't have a lot of disposable income to spend on CDs (which were expensive btw), the only way you got access to music was through radio or MTV. That means you were listening to whatever they felt like playing. No way to find songs from lesser known bands, or older tracks no longer played.

Of course now everything is so convenient....so convenient i actually barely listen to music anymore. Feels like I've heard it all.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TUx_APiw1A
 
Anybody remember the Alta Vista search engine? I was definitely more excited about the net back in the day.
 
Yeah, I remember it. I remember using Netscape Navigator to get there. I used Eudora for email, mIRC to chat with work buddies, Kazaa and Morpheous for music and 'Linux distros'.
 
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