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But it's gone.

I mean i, i never thought

i'd live to see that.

Great stores like tower music

are gone.

This business seems

like it survives

On a lot of older albums

and reselling of that,

So, this one, we definitely saw

New cds and new albums not

being bought as much,

But the bigger stores,

it totally destroyed them.

'Cause no one wanted to go

to the store anymore.

They can just get it

on their computer.

Or punch in whatever

thing they want.

I mean even itunes now

Is destroying

the music industry.

'Cause of that, people can buy

the song they want

And listen to it for one time

and that's it.

It is now the number one record

in america...

[ 'why do fools fall in love']

The fifties

was a singles business.

The sixties, mid-Sixties

is when the albums really

Started to be important.

And before that...

a, a hit single, to an artist

was free promotion.

They did, it wasn't, it wasn't

A source of revenue.

The source of revenue

came from the fact that

If they had a hit, the could get

A couple of thousand dollars

a night, more.

Good morning, this is ron lundy,

How you doing

on a friday morning

In the greatest city

in the world.

[Jazz music]

Little manischewitz.

From my perspective, uh,

I believe that the point

of labels is to,

In a sense,

Act as a filter.

In that regard, if blue note

had signed an artist,

You would feel,

well that was an artist

Worth listening to.

Because it was on blue note

And they made great records.

All these major labels,

The ones that existed

and the ones that still exist,

Were started as

phonograph companies.

Rca victor was

The victor talking machine

company.

Emi was the gramophone company.

Columbia was

the columbia phonograph company.

And then when rock-N-Roll

and Ips

Spurred the sales of vinyl,

they figured

They didn't need

to make furniture anymore.

Which was what they referred

to it as.

Technology's been

very beneficial

To the record companies.

Before.

78s, when 78s

became 33 and a thirds,

You could sell

all your music again.

When they became cds,

You could sell all

your music again.

When the cd was first initiated,

It was a true boom

at that particular point.

The eighties were

a very, very fertile period

For giant music sales.

Not as much as when

we got to the nineties,

Which it was commonplace

To sell 10 or

15 or 20 million albums.

You know, the record companies,

in the '80s

Had sort of uh, eliminated

their technology departments.

Their engineers,

and pretty much seeded it

To the electronics industry.

All of a sudden, technology

And how music was

gonna be recorded

Went somewhere else.

It was sorta,

kinda the beginning

Of the corporatization

more of america.

A&m was getting acquired,

island was getting acquired.

A lot of the great labels

That were independently owned

were falling away

And getting put

into the landscape

Of the corporations.

Once you had cds came out,

Where then in a digital world

Where the copy is as good

as the master.

And it's amazing

That they didn't recognize

That there was going to be

a huge change.

I think it came back

and hit them with a,

With a wallop, you know.

Um, with the internet.

The mp3, digital music

for the quick download

Is probably the

most substantive change

In music since maybe

the advent of digitalized music

Or the compact disc,

or maybe even the Ip.

It has changed everything.

Music is nothing but

Algorithmic processes right now.

Every time you encode it,

You put it through an algorithm,

You put an envelope around it,

You zip it up, and that's it.

This is the first time

technology

Actually attacked

the existing system

And started to take it away.

The music industry

was fairly constrained

For you know, 75 to, you know,

Maybe even 100 years

in terms of like,

How music was

found, sourced, developed,

Created, distributed,

marketed, promoted.

Uh, and it was a fairly

locked you know,

Paradigm and uh,

napster created an avenue

For consumers to step

out of that.

Which was superior

in almost every way.

Um, you know, it offered,

you know,

Greater convenience, obviously.

A much improved price,

choice, you know.

All of these things really

conspired to you know uh,

Produce an amazing

consumer experience.

Welcome to valley

of the dollars.

The valley and

the entire bay area, in fact,

Are at the center

of a revolution...

this was the you know, uh,

height of the bubble.

Uh, in the valley, you know,

Uh, in, in the bay area

and in san francisco,

Um, there was a euphoric amount

of optimism.

Anywhere that you went,

um, people were happy.

Because everybody thought

That they were

gonna be filthy rich.

Whether they were

involved in a startup

Or not, um, it, there was,

it was a magical time.

You thought

you would be filthy rich.

I actually never did.

Oh come on.

Uh, i actually never did,

but anyway...

Okay, sorry. It's your story.

So basically, you, you know...

you would, you would uh,

That really wrecked everything.

Sorry.

You can start over.

Yeah, let me start over.

So uh...

did you pass around fliers

at, on campus, or...?

No, it was completely

word of mouth, it was...

i think we spread it initially

through irc,

Which is internet relay chat.

Its basically

a network of people

Who just sort of congregate

Around different ideas and

We started

a little napster community.

And they just

sort of spread the idea.

It started spreading

through you know,

College, you know,

universities and,

The first point at which

it started to really take

Was, there was

a, an article published.

It was one of these

internet news sites,

It might have been zd net.

And you know they touched

On the legal issues,

but we weren't sued at the time,

We were still

working in massachusetts.

And uh,

that spurred a huge response

Of downloads.

Before that, it was, getting

a good response

And it was spreading somewhat,

But um, that kind of

kicked off the whole

You know, period of insanity.

With the,

the business side of it,

We eventually took money

From john fanning's friend,

yosiamo.

Sean parker and i moved out

to northern california.

You know, we uh,

hired some people

And it became a company.

At the beginning,

It was just like

parker and shawn

And he surrounded himself

With a bunch of friends

from cape

And they were

all good at computers

And they're just all you know,

it was just like

Basically having

a bunch of teenagers

In one place.

It was pretty cool.

The first time that i typed

a search term into napster

And saw the results came back,

I think it was

the rolling stones.

Uh, and i kind of pushed back

from the desk

And i was just like, whoa,

like what just happened?

Back in '99, over dial up,

Shitty browsers,

Web pages taking

seconds to load,

Here was

a f***ing fast ap.

That's what took me

from typing to submit,

To phhht!

What happened after that?

Web pages were not doing

that at that time.

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