Illustration by Kristen Gillette
By Laura Morgan
Daily Bruin Contributor
This past year, Napster revolutionized the way people hear and
obtain their music.
Leading the way, one young man has left his mark on music
software forever. He is Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster and a
college dropout who spent 60 hours creating a program which allowed
the sharing of music files. The result of his idea has forever
transformed the way people acquire music on the Internet.
“I think that Napster has really shown the music industry
that Internet music is something the people really want,”
Fanning said during a recent interview.
However, Internet music and the advancement of music technology
have been on a roller coaster ride since the emergence of Napster,
and some may wonder about the direction Internet music will take in
the future.
 Napster Shawn Fanning, founder of
Napster, revolutionized music acquisition with his software. This
year, the MP3 industry was one of the biggest things to hit the
Internet. In response, the Record Industry Association of America
decided to file a lawsuit against the widely-used peer-to-peer
music trading site known as Napster.
In addition to the formal lawsuit, some artists complain about
Napster, arguing they are not receiving compensation for the
availability of their music. However, among all of the protesters,
Napster still retains the support of many college students and
emerging artists.
“I am completely behind sharing music on the
Internet,” said Monc, an independent British artist, during a
recent interview. “My band relied on the Web primarily to get
our music out independently. I still believe that if you like an
album, you’ll go out and buy it.”
Yet with the recent court ruling, Napster users have seen a
drastic decrease in the number of songs available for download.
Some may wonder if peer-to-peer music trading will still exist on
the Internet in the future or if the industry is heading for an age
where listeners must visit music sites, such as CDnow.com, and
download songs for a fee.
“I think that it will be some sort of a blend between the
two,” Fanning said. “Right now the public version of
Napster is really the first generation of peer-to-peer technology.
What we’re doing and where we think Internet music is going
is more of a blend of a centralized system, where the server helps
make really important decisions about where you should connect to,
where to get the best version of the files, and helps to provide
additional information on the music. But I don’t think it
will go to just a strictly centralized system, because
there’s a very clear value of a peer-to-peer
system.”
With the decrease in music availability on Napster, many have
turned to such places as CDnow.com. However, although this may seem
like it will have great success in the future, it may still have
some kinks to sort out, according to Professor Robert Fink of the
Musicology Department.
“I was surfing the Web and I saw that you could get a
single track by downloading it off of CDnow.com,” Fink said
in a recent interview. “I thought this was great. So I tried
to buy it, and it took me three hours. I had to download this
player from Liquid Audio, and it didn’t work. They
didn’t tell me before I gave up my money that it wasn’t
going to be an MP3 (format).”
For reasons such as these, some may wonder if there will be
anything else that, like Napster, offers an immense variety of
easily downloadable music. These are key characteristics that has
set Napster apart from other peer-trading sites such as
Gnutella.
“At Napster right now, we’re really working on
improving the system,” said Fanning. “Some of the stuff
we’re building could almost be considered a second generation
of the system, in the sense that it’s designed to improve
what we think are two of the most important features to the user:
making sure users can find what they’re looking for and
making sure that they get that file successfully.”
However, since the RIAA won its case, music lovers may wonder if
record companies hold the key to the future of Internet music.
“I don’t think I was ever that optimistic that the
record companies would just simply roll over and go away when
Napster came out,” said Fink. “History shows that
eventually these new technologies, such as Napster, are integrated
into the whole business of music. But there is often a bitter
battle, and if the record company does not control the technology,
they succeed in delaying it, or killing it, for some
time.”
All court battles aside, it’s obvious that Internet music
and its emerging software have left their mark on society. Napster
has changed the way people listen to music, and it will continue to
play a big part in the ongoing Internet music revolution.