Get 25% off your Gentlebands order by using code "NationSquid" at checkout! https://bit.ly/43qWQe7In 1999, a program called Napster swept the internet with a...
I’ve heard a compelling counter argument that Napster was more a convenient scapegoat for the music industry than the actual root cause of its downfall. That the popularity of the CD format caused a mini-boom of sales in the late 80’s and 90’s as the convenience factor brought in new customers and existing music fans replaced their scratched up cassettes and vinyls with CD versions of those albums. Similar to the DVD boom of the late 90’s through late aughts.
But any boom has to come down at some point, the sales will return to earth. The decline just happened to coincide with file sharing and enough critical mass of high speed internet (so much of file sharing in the early days was kids tapping into their university’s high speed connection). So it gave the music industry an excuse to the public (and more importantly, investors) that, no, it’s not that those sales numbers were unsustainable, it’s those ne’r do well brats stealing our songs. If the authorities just cracked down on those criminals, sales would go back up.
That does seem plausible, because before Napster the industry boogeyman was sites hosting MP3s.
I still can’t believe how the copyright police culture won out in the end and everyone went from Napster and laughing at YoU WoUlDn’T DoWnLoAd A CaR to ”noooo you can’t pirate because that hurts the corporatinos!”
Yeah there was this weird shift where the cyberpunk attitude of “all big tech/corporations should not be trusted” got displaced by “we can’t stand in the way of the corporatinos that will only hinder ProgressTM.”
Well except for Apple. Now don’t get me wrong, Apple deserves a lot of shit for their practices, but it became a blame dump wherein all the problems with the tech industry were Apple problems and everyone else was fine; Bill Gates is getting ice cream! Elon posts le epic memes! I think we’re getting a shift though, with Musk running Twitter into the ground and fewer people buying the tech innovation narrative and seeing that the new tech media boss is the same as the old media boss. Things like the fediverse, Blue Sky, Mastadon gaining traction, hell the rise of VPNs into the mainstream signal that people have figured out, oh wait I’m the product.
I’ve heard a compelling counter argument that Napster was more a convenient scapegoat for the music industry than the actual root cause of its downfall. That the popularity of the CD format caused a mini-boom of sales in the late 80’s and 90’s as the convenience factor brought in new customers and existing music fans replaced their scratched up cassettes and vinyls with CD versions of those albums. Similar to the DVD boom of the late 90’s through late aughts.
But any boom has to come down at some point, the sales will return to earth. The decline just happened to coincide with file sharing and enough critical mass of high speed internet (so much of file sharing in the early days was kids tapping into their university’s high speed connection). So it gave the music industry an excuse to the public (and more importantly, investors) that, no, it’s not that those sales numbers were unsustainable, it’s those ne’r do well brats stealing our songs. If the authorities just cracked down on those criminals, sales would go back up.
That does seem plausible, because before Napster the industry boogeyman was sites hosting MP3s.
I still can’t believe how the copyright police culture won out in the end and everyone went from
Napster and laughing at YoU WoUlDn’T DoWnLoAd A CaR to 
”noooo you can’t pirate because that hurts the corporatinos!”
Yeah there was this weird shift where the cyberpunk attitude of “all big tech/corporations should not be trusted” got displaced by “we can’t stand in the way of the corporatinos that will only hinder ProgressTM.”
Well except for Apple. Now don’t get me wrong, Apple deserves a lot of shit for their practices, but it became a blame dump wherein all the problems with the tech industry were Apple problems and everyone else was fine; Bill Gates is getting ice cream! Elon posts le epic memes! I think we’re getting a shift though, with Musk running Twitter into the ground and fewer people buying the tech innovation narrative and seeing that the new tech media boss is the same as the old media boss. Things like the fediverse, Blue Sky, Mastadon gaining traction, hell the rise of VPNs into the mainstream signal that people have figured out, oh wait I’m the product.
That “le wholesome Bill Gates is standing in line for a borger!” picture was posted so many fucking times on
lol my musical taste was dramatically shaped by what was available on the local university network soulseek circa 2005