Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago • Hacker News Board

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#91

Post by miah_ » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

steve1977 wrote: post #72

mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

> And they’re so good at it, that the pirated product is usually substantially better than the official version How so, when most of these products are digital to begin with? If you have the quality of the studio master, then there’s nothing to improve.

There isn't always a studio behind a videos release. Sometimes the only remaining copy of a show is found in somebodies VHS collection and its filled with static and audio pops. These often get a standard 'as-is' release and then somebody in the community will clean it up, upscale the video, and fix the audio for a 'proper' release. Same goes for audio, sometimes its a old bootleg tape of a show that gets digitized and cleaned up.

This is before even getting into 'fan edits' where people will re-add cut scenes, or do other edits to films. For an example of that, search for 'Topher Grace Star Wars Prequel'.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#92

Post by hinkley » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #40

And now rock stars who were once as rich as, well, rock stars, are largely forced to get by on a pittance from either Spotify or YouTube. It used to be that there were hundreds of stars getting rich. Now there's Taylor Swift and... I can't name anyone else. But, hey, the quasi-communists who thought they were somehow liberating the music from the evil rich people ended up dragging all of the music industry down into…

David Bowie was a billionaire when he died.

It’s true that in the top 50 richest musicians, most of them were already rock gods before Napster. But they all are rock gods.

But then you have people like Swift, Robbie Williams, Dave Matthews and Dave Grohl, most of which were on the cusp. But Grohl for instance worked hard for more than a decade after Nirvana broke up, and I would be very surprised if a lot of his money didn’t end up coming from a combination of the Foo Fighters and royalties. Commentary on one of those net worth sites: the Foo Fighters “have consistently been one of the highest-grossing touring acts in the world for more than two decades.” So yeah.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#93

Post by grimgrin » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

romanhn wrote: post #80

Best part of Napster was searching for that one song you were interested in, and then looking through all of that user's shared files. It was an amazing discovery mechanism which I missed dearly with all the subsequent P2P apps. Spotify now fills this void, but it's not quite the same.

Definitely enjoy browsing a user's shares, and even occasionally checking what's been downloaded from me.

Soulseek goes strong https://nicotine-plus.org/

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#94

Post by echelon » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

39896880 wrote: post #53

sumedh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs was able to use their fear to sign up most publishers on itunes.

And sell outrageously priced MP3 players. There’s no way people were stocking those things with music they paid for.

This is exactly what happens when a reverse salient collapses and opens up a new channel of distribution.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#95

Post by hinkley » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

luuurker wrote: post #89

xhkkffbf wrote: post #40

And now rock stars who were once as rich as, well, rock stars, are largely forced to get by on a pittance from either Spotify or YouTube. It used to be that there were hundreds of stars getting rich. Now there's Taylor Swift and... I can't name anyone else. But, hey, the quasi-communists who thought they were somehow liberating the music from the evil rich people ended up dragging all of the music industry down into…

> Now there's Taylor Swift and... I can't name anyone else. Ariana Grande, Adele, Billie Eilish, etc. I believe someone called Kendrick Lamar has been popular recently? Are they rock stars? No, people tastes are a bit different now, but they are stars and they are rich. You not knowing them is a different problem.

Even Lily Allen is worth $4 mill and I only know - and own - one of her songs.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#96

Post by artninja1988 » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #78

Napster helped motivate and justify all sorts of nasty DRM and legislation, which has adverse implications for more than just piracy. And at the time of the MP3 frenzy, there were a relatively small number of people saying, "Wait, won't this mean a backlash of adversarial laws and technology that make things bad for everyone?" But that was ignored by the masses of newly-arrived Internet users wanting to take stuff fo…

Isn't this a bit like victim blaming? You should be criticizing the RIAA and lawmakers instead.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#97

Post by simonw » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

Something I found fascinating about Napster at the time is that it was fiercely difficult to use... but it didn't matter, because what it gave people (access to ANY music) was so desirable that they would learn how to use it.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#98

Post by ww520 » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

Ah good time. Bring back memory. My involvement with that period was I wrote a p2p file sharing app using the Gnutella protocol, an alternative to the Napster. It was a fun time.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#99

Post by steve1977 » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

miah_ wrote: post #91

steve1977 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they’re so good at it, that the pirated product is usually substantially better than the official version How so, when most of these products are digital to begin with? If you have the quality of the studio master, then there’s nothing to improve.

There isn't always a studio behind a videos release. Sometimes the only remaining copy of a show is found in somebodies VHS collection and its filled with static and audio pops. These often get a standard 'as-is' release and then somebody in the community will clean it up, upscale the video, and fix the audio for a 'proper' release. Same goes for audio, sometimes its a old bootleg tape of a show that gets digitized a…

But in most of those cases I wouldn’t really speak of „official“ versions.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#100

Post by _fat_santa » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

Napster was a little before my time, though I fondly remember torrenting when I was a kid and oddly enough, it was a small time scam that got me into it.

I remember when I was a kid (maybe 13 or 14) I really (and I mean really) wanted to play Grand Theft Auto. My dad picked up a copy of GTA San Andreas for me about a year prior but after seeing the violence and language he forced me to take it back, that put the taste into my mouth and I wanted more.

So I searched for "free video game downloads" and I remember I went to this site that claimed that for just $30, you could "download unlimited video games for free". I begged my parents to let me sign up and pay the $30 until they finally relented and bought it for me.

What it turned out to be was just a tutorial on how to use uTorrent (and they also had an "addon" for unlimited MP3's which taught you how to use Limewire).

I realized pretty quickly I got scammed and I think to date this is the only scam that I've ever fallen for. Kinda worked out though because I learned how to torrent and after a few years I had a basic gaming PC with a hard drive full of games that I had torrented (everything from Crysis to GTA games to every Call of Duty game).

I was also pretty deep into torrenting music right up until Spotify came to the USA (I still remember all the "workarounds" to get Spotify to work in the US before they officially released here, though I didn't try any myself)

Since then Spotify has remained my longest kept subscription and for all it's faults I think Spotify got the solution to music piracy right. With Spotify it was just more convenient to pay them every month then to bother pirating music and uploading it to my iPhone.