Numerous advances in technology have resulted in our capacity to share and absorb information faster than ever before. The growth in both the kinds of technology and the speed at which it works, has been exponential: Each new technological innovation generates an assortment of new directions and possibilities. One of the most creative innovations, spawned by the advent of broadband Internet, is Shawn Fanning’s brainchild, Napster. Marshall McLuhan famously stated that “the message of any medium or technology is the change in scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs”. It is hard to find a truer form of new media artifact than Napster. The invention of Napster initiated the beginning of the decommodification of music. This creation shook the foundations of the music business industry as well as an array of social, legal and even physiological aspects of humanity. The invention of Napster marked a transformation in how we treat to music and perhaps more so how we are treated by music; one of the most pervasive, historical and influential art forms known to mankind. With almost all goods associated with the music industry traded as purchasable commodities, Napster marked a departure from this norm. Napster was the catalyst for large-scale consumer emancipation with significant repercussions in the broader consumer market itself. This paper will elaborate on the beneficial changes brought about by the invention of Napster.
Before we assess the immense changes that resulted from Napster, it is important to contextualize the world at the time of its creation. Prior to the advent of Napster, the music industry was a competitive, cutthroat, hierarchal and a highly commodified business. Everything had to be bought: recording time, engineers, publicity etc. This description generally applies to the world’s market places as a whole. Long before Napster existed, many felt that this marketplace paradigm was more of an imposition than a benefit. For example, in 1996, John Perry Barlow the founder of the Electronc Frontier Foundation was considering a cyberspace free of government regulation when he wrote, “I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear... We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economics, power, military force, or station of birth...The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule” (John Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace). In particular, the last phrase in this quotation is what lies at the heart of the inspiration for Napster. The creators of Napster sought to treat other music listeners the way that they wanted to be treated; namely, with unimpeded access to music of one’s choice.
John Barlow Speaking at a TedX event
Shawn Fanning created a vast network allowing users to trade MP3 files with others over the internet. This program came with two main functionalities. It compiled a searchable directory that allowed users to locate desired content on other user’s machines. This was combined with a file transfer protocol allowing the content to be transferred directly from the host user’s computer to the requester’s computer. Hence, peer to peer downloading.
The circumstances that led to the creation of Napster were reminiscent of the state of the world when the Whole Earth Catalog and Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) were created, as documented in Fred Turner’s article “Where Counterculture Met the New Economy”. Many of the features of these forms of media are similar to Napster, and the social consequences are also aligned. The Whole Earth Catalog was a print based forum and WELL was an internet-based forum, both used for uncensored discussion. Absolutely any topic could be covered but the user was always responsible for his actions and opinions expressed in these forums. They were community-oriented and, according to its founder, opposed to the hierarchical, non-transparent and smothering fashion by which financial and political institutions were structured. Similarly, Napster sought to confront and undermine the established structure of the music industry. The above media, including Napster, also created a venue where members from a multitude of scattered geographic regions could discuss and share views or products, with relative ease, in an abbreviated time frame. This created a sense of community in the virtual world that was not possible in real world interactions and drastically changed the social arrangements of those who used it. When one reviews the design goals for WELL listed by Turner, the similarities with Napster are immediately apparent. WELL was meant to be a free, self-governing and open-ended universe (Where Counter Culture Met the New Economy, 495), all users had to consider the knowledge and cultural products discussed as free and open to criticism and healthy debate. Turner describes networks such as WELL as a tool to recapture “the sense of cooperative spirit that so many people seemed to lose...turning cooperation into a way of life - a merger of knowledge capital, social capital and communion” (Ibid, 485-486).
Humans are often assumed to be individualist by nature, not cooperative and not interested in sharing earned capital. By contrast, the Whole Earth Catalogue and WELL tap into deeply held social norms of community sharing and reciprocity. Similarly, all the music in the databases of Napster were available to be shared. For the first time music was donated by users, given freely as a gift for anyone to download, the consumerism associated with music began to disappear. Furthermore, most MP3’s were impeccably labeled and of high audio quality which a general desire to give music away for free but have it be of the utmost quality as well. Users genuinely enjoyed broadening their musical horizons as well as helping others broaden theirs. The philosophy underlying these three media has led to what McLuhan describes as the “retribalizing of mankind”. Members from all these media chose to “establish new, exemplary communities from which a corrupt mainstream might draw inspiration” (Where Counterculture met the New Economy, 493) As a group, as one tribe, the communities formed through these media helped to shape the future of the world.
The post humanist school of thought questions the more traditional humanist view of man and examines the transformation resulting from new media. It asks questions such as do these technologies control their users? What does it mean to be human or social in age where we are dependent on intelligent machines? Are humans a form resistant to technological intervention? Do media technologies have the power to transform a culture? With the case of Napster, there is no doubt that it has altered our cultural practices. Napster gave rise to a greater interest in a culture of sharing information on a non profit basis.
Less obvious but of equal importance, Napster created a link between the information stored and transferred over its servers and our brains and bodies. More specifically, it affected our musical memories. As mentioned, Napster was one of the most accessed programs on the internet of its time. Millions and millions of songs became accessible in mere seconds. Before Napster, to find music they enjoyed, humans had to hear and remember the name and artist of a song and then go to the record store and buy it. If they were serious about these songs and musicians, they often would have vast libraries of the physical copies of songs. Many times these physical copies were in technologically ancient forms such as vinyl or 8-trak whose associated players can be difficult to find. To find a specific song, they had to remember it, find it on their shelves, transfer it to whatever form of record player they used and then listen. They had to know the artist and/or song very specifically, the process was long and tedious. Napster’s immense storage capacity led to it to function as a digitized musical database. Humans no longer needed to store this information themselves. They became dependent on Napster for development or creation of musical tastes and preferences as well as the database which essentially took over the brain’s function of musical memory. As Friedrich Kittler aptly said “once storage media can accommodate optical and acoustic data, human memory capacity it bound to dwindle... it is no longer through writing that the dead remain in the memories of the living” (Introduction, 10). Acting as our musical libraries, stores and critics combined, Napster can then be seen as somewhat of an extension of our brains and memories, and ultimately lead to less use of these human functions.
From the onset, the internet was appreciated as a business opportunity, particularly for the youth market. Normal and everyday parts of human life could be packaged, put on the internet and then sold back to the public. Modern examples of this include Craigslist or the more corporatized eBay and other on-line tools to sell goods. Furthermore, physical commodities could be digitized and then re-sold as a new product altogether. Examples of this include Google Books or Amazon which sell online versions of literary classics. Reality TV such as DotComGuy is another example of a new media form based on the packaging and transmitting of everyday life. As Mark Andrejevic notes, “The consensus seems to be that the development of interactive media and of computer processing and storage power enabled the increasing economic exploitation of comprehensive forms of consumer monitoring” (The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation fo Self-Disclosure, 231). Andrejevic also found that “more information than ever before is being privatized as it is collected and aggregated so that it can be re-sold as a commodity or incorporated into the development of customized commodities” (Ibid, 245). Companies now easily track which products were sold and then gears future products to what they assumed were the most popular interests of their customers. This raises two issues. The first is the issue of privacy and who could view and review information collected through online supervision. The second is the issue that it reduces the amount of people who can control products on the cyber world marketplace. The latter can be related to the music industry. Music, which had previously been a major conduit of self-expression and originality, became concentrated solely on sales and business related aspects of the industry. The music being produced lacked originality but was so easily accessed and viewed that the previous masters of the art were disappearing and slowly being forgotten. Essentially music that was geared toward sales as opposed to quality was what was being released and sold. Napster provided a place where music of all genres were equally accessible and the user could select music based on personal preferences as opposed to what the record industry put forth as quality music. Moreover, the lack of profit motive only served to increase its popularity as for-profit dealers were always viewed warily. Napster was created out of what many viewed was necessity. The Artist, Prince, although not the biggest supporter of Napster, captured the public discontent with the earlier pre-Napster model of the music industry when he stated that “what record companies don’t realize is that Napster is just one illustration of the growing frustration over how much the record companies control what music people get to hear, over how the air waves, record labels and record stores which are now all part of this ‘system’ that recording companies have pretty much succeeded in establishing, are becoming increasingly dominated by musical ‘products’ to the detriment of real music. Why should the record company have such control over how he, the music lover, wants to experience the music?” (The Social Form of Napster: Cultivating the Paradox of Consumer Emancipation, 1) Napster, more than any other media of the era had a considerable emancipative relation to the capitalist market system. Napster’s consumption experiences are socially constructed to be distant from the economic realms of mainstream consumption and the music market. This sparked considerable change in humanities opinion about how for-profit industries should be operated as well as offered alternative ways to think about what the value of information to what many now consider should be a free resource for all.
Ultimately, Napster did not survive for at least two reasons. Napster, not surprisingly, raised the ire of the record companies who were interested in copyright and intellectual property rights as well as musicians and producers who sought to financially gain from their work. The legal proceedings proved too much. Napster also did not survive because it lacked a financial model that would enable it to purchase the rights to share the music, which the legal proceedings deemed necessary. This was not achieved legally until the more recent iTunes which charges on a per song basis to an Apple product that cannot be used to share with others. Napster was ultimately closed down because it had sought to by pass the capitalist market system that controlled the music industry.
The Napster software catalogued all MP3 files from designated computer drives and stored that information on Napster’s central servers. This enabled users to search through music available on others’ computers and download the desired files. Users ccould locate files based on criteria about the artist, song title and much more. Furthermore, once a Napster user found a song they liked, they could then view the entire music library of the user from whom they downloaded the original song. Users interested in broadening their knowledge of jazz, for example, could search a file containing tunes by well known musicians such as Miles Davis or Louis Armstrong and subsequently look at the directories of users who had extensive jazz collections. This made it easier to find high-quality music from artists who were previously unknown. Additionally, Napster hosted chat rooms which permitted music aficionados to share information and converse with others who had similar tastes.
During Napster’s peak operation from 1999 to about 2001, firms monitoring internet usage reported that it was the fastest spreading application ever tracked. Napster had approximately 90 million users, the overwhelming majority of whom used the service to obtain copies of copyrighted recordings. Over half of those users were reported from the US, but there were significant numbers from Canada, the UK, Brazil, Germany and Australia. From 2000 to 2001, the number of Americans who had downloaded music off the internet increased by more than forty percent, the average weekend resulted in about 250 million songs shared.
Globe and Mail Technology: Napster Short Documentary
The circumstances that led to the creation of Napster were reminiscent of the state of the world when the Whole Earth Catalog and Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) were created, as documented in Fred Turner’s article “Where Counterculture Met the New Economy”. Many of the features of these forms of media are similar to Napster, and the social consequences are also aligned. The Whole Earth Catalog was a print based forum and WELL was an internet-based forum, both used for uncensored discussion. Absolutely any topic could be covered but the user was always responsible for his actions and opinions expressed in these forums. They were community-oriented and, according to its founder, opposed to the hierarchical, non-transparent and smothering fashion by which financial and political institutions were structured. Similarly, Napster sought to confront and undermine the established structure of the music industry. The above media, including Napster, also created a venue where members from a multitude of scattered geographic regions could discuss and share views or products, with relative ease, in an abbreviated time frame. This created a sense of community in the virtual world that was not possible in real world interactions and drastically changed the social arrangements of those who used it. When one reviews the design goals for WELL listed by Turner, the similarities with Napster are immediately apparent. WELL was meant to be a free, self-governing and open-ended universe (Where Counter Culture Met the New Economy, 495), all users had to consider the knowledge and cultural products discussed as free and open to criticism and healthy debate. Turner describes networks such as WELL as a tool to recapture “the sense of cooperative spirit that so many people seemed to lose...turning cooperation into a way of life - a merger of knowledge capital, social capital and communion” (Ibid, 485-486). 
Humans are often assumed to be individualist by nature, not cooperative and not interested in sharing earned capital. By contrast, the Whole Earth Catalogue and WELL tap into deeply held social norms of community sharing and reciprocity. Similarly, all the music in the databases of Napster were available to be shared. For the first time music was donated by users, given freely as a gift for anyone to download, the consumerism associated with music began to disappear. Furthermore, most MP3’s were impeccably labeled and of high audio quality which a general desire to give music away for free but have it be of the utmost quality as well. Users genuinely enjoyed broadening their musical horizons as well as helping others broaden theirs. The philosophy underlying these three media has led to what McLuhan describes as the “retribalizing of mankind”. Members from all these media chose to “establish new, exemplary communities from which a corrupt mainstream might draw inspiration” (Where Counterculture met the New Economy, 493) As a group, as one tribe, the communities formed through these media helped to shape the future of the world. |
| Marshall Mcluhan |
 |
| Ancient Media: 8-Trak Player |
Less obvious but of equal importance, Napster created a link between the information stored and transferred over its servers and our brains and bodies. More specifically, it affected our musical memories. As mentioned, Napster was one of the most accessed programs on the internet of its time. Millions and millions of songs became accessible in mere seconds. Before Napster, to find music they enjoyed, humans had to hear and remember the name and artist of a song and then go to the record store and buy it. If they were serious about these songs and musicians, they often would have vast libraries of the physical copies of songs. Many times these physical copies were in technologically ancient forms such as vinyl or 8-trak whose associated players can be difficult to find. To find a specific song, they had to remember it, find it on their shelves, transfer it to whatever form of record player they used and then listen. They had to know the artist and/or song very specifically, the process was long and tedious. Napster’s immense storage capacity led to it to function as a digitized musical database. Humans no longer needed to store this information themselves. They became dependent on Napster for development or creation of musical tastes and preferences as well as the database which essentially took over the brain’s function of musical memory. As Friedrich Kittler aptly said “once storage media can accommodate optical and acoustic data, human memory capacity it bound to dwindle... it is no longer through writing that the dead remain in the memories of the living” (Introduction, 10). Acting as our musical libraries, stores and critics combined, Napster can then be seen as somewhat of an extension of our brains and memories, and ultimately lead to less use of these human functions.
From the onset, the internet was appreciated as a business opportunity, particularly for the youth market. Normal and everyday parts of human life could be packaged, put on the internet and then sold back to the public. Modern examples of this include Craigslist or the more corporatized eBay and other on-line tools to sell goods. Furthermore, physical commodities could be digitized and then re-sold as a new product altogether. Examples of this include Google Books or Amazon which sell online versions of literary classics. Reality TV such as DotComGuy is another example of a new media form based on the packaging and transmitting of everyday life. As Mark Andrejevic notes, “The consensus seems to be that the development of interactive media and of computer processing and storage power enabled the increasing economic exploitation of comprehensive forms of consumer monitoring” (The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation fo Self-Disclosure, 231). Andrejevic also found that “more information than ever before is being privatized as it is collected and aggregated so that it can be re-sold as a commodity or incorporated into the development of customized commodities” (Ibid, 245). Companies now easily track which products were sold and then gears future products to what they assumed were the most popular interests of their customers. This raises two issues. The first is the issue of privacy and who could view and review information collected through online supervision. The second is the issue that it reduces the amount of people who can control products on the cyber world marketplace. The latter can be related to the music industry. Music, which had previously been a major conduit of self-expression and originality, became concentrated solely on sales and business related aspects of the industry. The music being produced lacked originality but was so easily accessed and viewed that the previous masters of the art were disappearing and slowly being forgotten. Essentially music that was geared toward sales as opposed to quality was what was being released and sold. Napster provided a place where music of all genres were equally accessible and the user could select music based on personal preferences as opposed to what the record industry put forth as quality music. Moreover, the lack of profit motive only served to increase its popularity as for-profit dealers were always viewed warily. Napster was created out of what many viewed was necessity. The Artist, Prince, although not the biggest supporter of Napster, captured the public discontent with the earlier pre-Napster model of the music industry when he stated that “what record companies don’t realize is that Napster is just one illustration of the growing frustration over how much the record companies control what music people get to hear, over how the air waves, record labels and record stores which are now all part of this ‘system’ that recording companies have pretty much succeeded in establishing, are becoming increasingly dominated by musical ‘products’ to the detriment of real music. Why should the record company have such control over how he, the music lover, wants to experience the music?” (The Social Form of Napster: Cultivating the Paradox of Consumer Emancipation, 1) Napster, more than any other media of the era had a considerable emancipative relation to the capitalist market system. Napster’s consumption experiences are socially constructed to be distant from the economic realms of mainstream consumption and the music market. This sparked considerable change in humanities opinion about how for-profit industries should be operated as well as offered alternative ways to think about what the value of information to what many now consider should be a free resource for all. |
| Recording Industry Association of America |
In spite of its demise, the Napster foray into the music market has changed our view about the potential for sharing and creating a sense of community through the internet. It was an exercise in promoting a different kind of society, distant from the pre-existing mainstream profit-based music market. It offered alternative ways of thinking about the status and value of information and forced us to reconsider what resources might be free on the internet. It enabled us to search and collect vast amounts of music. Napster challenged us to think about the ways the internet could be used to create a free library of shared products. To some extent, Facebook is an amalgamation of media such as the World Earth Catalog, Well or Napster in that it is also free, personalized, enables information to be shared freely, and connects scattered throughout individuals in a social setting. Wikipedia is another example of a free sharing of information that is build on the altruistic acts of individuals seeking to build an internet-based encyclopedia and support the notion of free information for all. Moreover, Napster subtly altered the way our brains consider and decide what music is enjoyable and provides us with a permanent database for storage. Napster changed humanity in that we began to distance ourselves from the idea of total capital markets and became more altruistic. The creation of this media was done with human decision making but in my opinion the societal and physical changes created by Napster are just as Mcluhan says, changes that did not “depend upon approval of those living in society, effects take shape without human decision making” (The Medium is The Message, 19).
**Please Note: If no citation present, material was derived from class notes and lectures
