
We owe a lot to Shawn Fanning
By Mike McGuire
Published: 3 June 2009 15:15 GMT
Ten years after the launch of digital music upstart Napster, Gartner analyst Mike McGuire ponders the controversial program's legacy.
Nostalgia is death.
So far be it for me to wax nostalgic about just about anything - but letting the 10-year anniversary of Shawn Fanning's single-handed destabilisation of the media industry go by without mention doesn't seem right.
In short, my feeling about Napster requires me to paraphrase TV critic Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle: Everything we know today about the music industry, we owe to Fanning and Napster.
Some shout-outs:
To Shawn Fanning: I say, "thanks". Never have so many media industry analysts owed so much to a single individual. If it weren't for Napster, we'd all be writing reports about the battle between SACD and DVD-A's for market supremacy as replacements for the Redbook-based CD.
To Hank Berry (and to some extent the Bertelsmann AG and BMG Entertainment groups): I bestow the You Were Dead Right Award for actually seeing the commercial possibilities of online music/content distribution. Too bad the music labels, movie studios and others couldn't get in agreement faster to create a paid version.
To Apple and Steve Jobs: You know you owe a nod of the hat to Napster and Fanning, right? Without Napster, and ultimately Hank Berry's undoing by the courts and the content companies, you might not have the market dominance you have now because, frankly, the tethered download options and subscription services might have been the only online alternatives supported by the labels.
But most of all, if it weren't for Napster, the labels would probably have had little if any reason to license any alternative to the CD.
Second, my personal observations about Napster and history:
The music discovery opportunities enabled by the free streaming capability (of Napster's entire catalog) with a simple payment capability might seem like a bit of a throwback but it's actually quite a powerful alternative to the iPod and iTunes.
Mike McGuire is a research vice president with Gartner's media industry advisory services
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