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Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

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

#321
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s offensive changes from generation to generation. Blackface is a problem because racism is a problem. I can envision a future where racism against blacks is so low that blackface in itself is no longer triggering. As an example: I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s with the feminist second wave. Women of my generation hated being called girl, for good reason! In that time, men were men, and women were considered chil…

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People don't like to be discriminated against based on their skin color or gender so there is always going to be resistance against bigots like you, who justify and rationalize the discrimination. There has been some progress as evident by the fact that your racist beliefs are already a relatively fringe minority. Even people like you changed, you no longer advocate for slavery or colonialism and probably don't support lynchings, murdering gay people or banning women's right to vote, to understand social change in your case you just have to shift your timeframe by a hundred years or so. You will be dragged along into the future or die, that's how social progress happens, older bigots die off and are replaced by slightly less racist bigots. Overall, slowly progress will be made.

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

#322
When Napster came out, I started discovering a lot of new things I liked and would then go and buy the CDs. I was spending about $50 per month or so... It was wonderful.

Then they decided to start suing their own customers out of greed. I've not bought a new CD since.

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

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely enjoy browsing a user's shares, and even occasionally checking what's been downloaded from me. Soulseek goes strong https://nicotine-plus.org/

I had no idea that this existed. I already found cool stuff. Thank you so much! This brings me way back to when I hosted a Hotwire server.

Guessing you’re taking about Hotline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications

I ran a Hotline server for a few months, but ran KDX and Carracho servers for years. Same client-server setup as Hotline. Great communities and interesting people.

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea that this existed. I already found cool stuff. Thank you so much! This brings me way back to when I hosted a Hotwire server.

Guessing you’re taking about Hotline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications I ran a Hotline server for a few months, but ran KDX and Carracho servers for years. Same client-server setup as Hotline. Great communities and interesting people.

Yup, my brain glitched. That is the one.

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

#325

For the younger folks: Napster arose when CDs and radio were the dominant official commercial distribution platforms for music. CD ripping into MP3s and portable music players drove the need to share them, and the internet was new, but needed a more scalable way to exchange them. Back in the day, it was mostly IRC channels, but these were slow and cumbersome. So Napster, Gnutella, and Hotline took off. These graduall…

I miss Hotline so much. Glad The Agency is still around.

I used Hotline client a bunch, but ran my own servers on KDX and Carracho. Same client-server setup as Hotline.

It was great to peruse the music people had uploaded to my server and discover bands I didn’t know that way.

Not having any luck finding info about The Agency. Can you provide some?

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

#326
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mone…

>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. Data about “net worth”, especially on free clickbait websites, is garbage speculation with no evidence or basis in reality. It’s not like those website makers have any access to someone’s brokerage accounts and list of assets they have title t…

Then I guess we can’t have a conversation about whether Napster “ruined” the music industry or not since it’s pure speculation.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Executive compensation is part of a business’s expense [...] Right. So when you said this.. >Spotify loves money so much it has yet to show a profit in almost 20 years. ..was your point that Spotify, the company , doesn't love money, even if the executives might?

Spotify “loves” money implies that Spotify is penny pinching because it is in such a powerful position that it can afford to alienate customers, whereas my point is Spotify is probably making a calculation to reduce expenses because it is not even known if it is a viable business yet. Spotify’s executive compensation is what it is, it is still a large organization managing 9k employees with 600M customers, so they ob…

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

#328
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it's tech bro founder is a multibillionaire

Why is that relevant? The organization he has lots of equity in due to his negotiations as a founder has 600M customers and 9k employees. The public markets still believe it might be worth a few billion dollars for an organization that has 600M customers with recurring revenue. The “tech bro” founder could have had billions of more dollars if he had dumped all his Spotify shares years ago. It does not mean the organi…

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify loves money so much it has yet to show a profit in almost 20 years.

Spotify posted €168M in profit for Q1 2024. But executives loving money is a separate issue from whether the company is profitable or not. Daniel Ek takes no salary but has filed to sell €165M in stock so far in 2024.

Another point to consider is that record labels also love money and may be ruining Spotify as per PP's comment.

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

#330
post #279
post #115

Back around in World of Warcraft around 2009ish, there was a rogue named Napster that someone invited to the guild I was in as a casual/friend. I never found out if he was actually the founder for real but I always wanted to add "geared up the founder of Napster in Sunwell" to my resume somehow.

to Vanilla WoW. DnT were rockstars. 2009 was after the drama, and the migration to the Horde side, right? I stopped playing around that time (it was distracting me from RL stuff, as well as removing some of the elements that made it such a great distraction), but the first five or so years of that game are really special memories.

DnT died in vanilla and Napster joined during the reorganization led by Kiberian and a few other old DnT on Blackrock, yeah.

It was an interesting time for many reasons, like you said the first waves of casualitis (lol) were sweeping through, it was becoming harder to fill raids, many people who were thought to be good players in naxx were the same types that were letting scorch fall off but they were still demanding gear like they were rockstars, the game finally hit that sorta cultural moment around TBC too so we had everyone in guild chat from porn stars like Mia Rose to guys like Napster. Just wild times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJoNZJW8jpw

One day I'm going to write a book on that era, I think I'm one of the few people who got into Death and Taxes, Aurora, Exodus, Vigil and Premonition and I have many many stories from all the bleeding at on the bleeding edge of the US raiding scene.

Perls/Puresin was my character for reference

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