He seems like an average teenager, possibly doing homework on his laptop. Maybe just simply searching the web? Well, what if I told you that he's not doing homework, because he dropped out of college just recently. What if I told you that he is writing code? Code for what you might ask? This man's name is Shawn Fanning, and he is writing code for a new program called Napster. Napster? is a nickname of his representing his nappy hair under his baseball hat, hair that goes without sleep for days. He doesn't sleep because he loves the computer and has an excellent, revolutionary idea to possibly change the music industry forever! Today, I am going to inform you about Napster. More specifically, it's early goals and success, where it is at now, legally and in size, and finally, what the future holds for Napster.
Napster is now the world's largest file sharing community. It employs exactly 50 workers. The Napster software became incorporated in May of 1999. It was then when Shawn produced its first version of the software. That is, a 2.0 beta version, with chat features, a music player, and the allowance of users to share their mp3 libraries. MP3 is an audio format that allows users to compress and send music files easily over the Net. It was namedDownload of the Week? in it first week on the Net and received 300,000 downloads at download.com. Here's how it works, you can simply type a song title or artist in the search bar and Napster, as a service, will search all libraries of the users logged on. The results are organized by speed connection, title, and length. It is best described as a sharing service! As the site grew, so did the curiosity of record labels and artists alike. In early August the site users doubled in size for a period of two weeks. It was then when the co-founder of Napster stated,Our goal eventually for our users is to be unaffected by growth.? As early as November 1st of 1999 Napster CEO Eileen Richardson reported to say,We?re going to follow all of the laws to the letter, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Napster is much more about community.
