NEWS: Confessions of a Former Napster-aholic

MUSIC: Confessions of a Former Napster-aholic

Defining moments of a generation: Where you were when you found out JFK/John Lennon/Kurt Cobain had died. When you witnessed the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Neil Armstrong do the moon walk or the Berlin Wall come crumbling down.



For me it was in the long-long ago in a faraway century called summer '99. I was visiting Chicago to catch some shows when my friend's brother urgently ushered me into his back bedroom. He closed the door behind him, took my chin in his hand, gazed into my eyes and declared.... "I will never buy music again!"



He was in love, but not with me. On his computer screen was the most glorious site a $60-per-week Amoeba record shop junkie could fathom: Napster.



Spreading like wildfire, music lovers everywhere began missing many social opportunities due to Napstering. And the rest they say, is history.



(For those of you too young to be on this site, Napster was the biggest change in music since the invention of the CD.)



The swinging days of Napster and its clones came to a harsh close when Metallica and the RIAA sued Napster and later, pre-teen girls with too many now-officially illegal Britney and Christina files squirreled away in their online music library.



Today, Napster is a legal music-downloading service trying to compete with the big boys at Apple iTunes. As history proves, people didn't take to New Coke, and late last night I received a tip that Napster was harkening back to the days of old by offering free listens and a host of other cool services. A major flaw in their plan is that the Napster service is not compatible with iPods. Yeah, that's a problem.



Here's to a future of bigger and better defining moments.

I feel like a nerd...I remember the day i used napster for the first time.

The new Napster thing isn't actually a bad idea if you just want to hear a few songs by a band before buying something. As I understand it you have to use a flash interface on their webpage (which means you don't get to download anything to your computer) and you can only listen to a song 5 times.

I remember sitting patiently in the chatroom waiting for someone to respond to my quiet inquiry about DJ Shadow tracks.

a/s/l?

Oh, me too. And I adored it.

Anyone else ever use Audiogalaxy? That shit was great!

*tear*

I have to admit, those first few months of Napster were pretty crazy.

I was an irc junkie, then went onto limewire rather than napster.Then hotline. Now it's torrents and kdx

Yeah, napster was really exciting. Odd that it's been so long. Getting nostalgic about the MP3 era seems a little premature, but I suppose it's been several years now. I wish I still had the installer for the client, just so I could remember it better.

I totally loved audiogalaxy, wish i had a lan connection then

I remember the first song I downloaded...Adam Sandlers, I'll grow old with you.
Yea many social moments were lost due to Napster. I do miss free music. There are still some sites out there offering peer to peer services, but its kind of the wild west.
I totally agreed that napster turned the music world up side down. The funny part is that it took them so long to realize that this was the new way and there was no going back. Fucking RIAA. They can kiss my ass. I'm just waiting for someone to figure out the online music than and clean house. itunes has it pretty close, but they are missing the mark on a few things.

The week I discovered Napster was the same week I got a cable modem. It was glorious.

Fuck, I subsisted on 56k back then....

I don't know where we, as a generation, go from here. We saw so much in such a short time.

yeah I remember those days. 3.5kbs downloading ....

Huh! Jammy fucker.

I called it Napsterbating. I was lucky to get a song in an hour. I am not a supporter of the file sharing idea anymore though. I gladly pay for every song on iTunes.

Funny thing, when Napster died and every successor turned out to be shit, I went back to buying CDs.

Damn you, Metallica, for making an honest man of me...

i remember a friend telling me about napster. i didn't understand what he was talking about, but i checked it out for myself. when i logged on for the first time, there were only about 700 or so people using it. so for a while, you could hardly find anything good.

Hmm its funny you know... I caught it near the end one of the first times I ever saw it in action was over at my brothers girlfriend's house he was downloading the beach boys and strange random music like the theme to the original gummi bears show. We saw that program and how easy it was to just get any sort of music it was like....Christmas! It was like music Heaven! We could finally get any kind of music! Not just that Top 40 stuff they play on the radio! Not just Pop rock not just rap but anything!!! Including theme songs from old 80s tv and video games!! I can't describe with words the surge of euphoria...thinking back to how napster was then and how it is now just makes me sad. Makes me want to pour out a 40 for our fallen homey. Napster is like a fallen titan. The god of file sharing, and the first one in the game. Like Al capone or something. Everyybody raise your glasses in honor of the old napster! The one that had some soul!

family guy needs to make a like a little sketch about the day that the RIAA busted napster! That would be GENIUS!!! You could see the CIA and SWAT teams crash through the window of this guys apartment building. Shooting servers and pulling plugs from RJ-45 ports. They throw this guys master PC down some stairs and the creator is sitting in the corner crying. Then it cuts to them putting that Big white cat thing in hand cuffs and walk him outside to a patrol car...Oh man I HAVE to see that!!! That is a sketch for the ages!!

I remember the days of sitting in the chat rooms, getting political and then picking on users who just plain ol' pissed us off.

Napster may be gone, but trolling will live forever.

I read about it in a PC mag that is now long dead (PC Accelerator), thought it was too good to be true for about a week after reading it, then decided to try it out and see.

Best decision ever.

I even have a Napster shirt somewhere. If my band ever gets to open for Metallica, I know what I'm wearing.

I remember the year '99 and napster fun too.
So many songs and such a huge amount of time spent downloading them.

Slow connection... i dont miss you at all.

It's all about BitComet now! Demonoid.com! It's the shit!

Napster was bad ass back in the day!

Word.

:pours:

:weeps: