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And some of these places

they were playing

For the first time.

[Music]

I think the first time i

ever yeah, the name napster

Was backstage

after a college gig

Where we'd played

boston and new york

I bet for five or six years.

Just over and

over and over again.

Had finally built up

our fan base

To like 500 people a night

Or 700 people a night

and then we flew a red eye

To play a college gig

in california.

Halloween gig, or something

Had never been west, ever.

And then there were

more fans there

And they knew all the lyrics.

- It was...

- Yeah.

And there was no, no radio.

And no press and no one knew

except everyone.

Yeah, it's kind of like uh,

instant distribution.

You know, without the,

without the big wigs on top

Figuring out it's like this

But its not like

we don't like big wigs,

'Cause i've seen

you wear big wigs.

I'm wearing

a big wig at the moment.

Its a huge wig.

So for an independent band,

With no uh, ties to any

label

To get to that scale just by

free sharing,

It was pretty clear

that it was um,

Pretty powerful and they

were really open about

The gratitude for that.

Napster was absolutely the,

the most well known

And most chatted-About

company

In the tech world by far.

It was pretty cool

working at napster

Like if you showed up, you were

kind of the star of the party.

All you need was a napster

you know, sticker

And you were probably

gonna either get

A free drink or, or get laid.

Uh, one of the two,

so it was actually

A pretty awesome time

to be associated

Ron has a party

on a friday night.

We learned that day

That hummer winblad

had invested.

We had a large gathering

For our limited partners in

The angel investor Ip funds.

You had warren buffett,

dana carvey,

Mark andriessen,

Schwarzenneger's,

schwarzenneger's hummer.

Schwarzenneger's hummer.

You had shawn fanning,

sean parker

Larry and sergey of google fame.

Not then, but now, google fame.

And uh, i can remember

you know, how, how taken

The google guys were

by the napster guys,

So to speak.

And i can remember thinking

You know, good luck

with that search engine thing.

I hope that works out for you.

They actually said

at one point like uh,

Something to the effect of

how they were envious of

The napster brand

and how it's so cool.

And i'm like, but you guys

are you know, doing great

And they said, 'no,

but it's nothing like napster. '

And i'm thinking,

in my head like uh,

You have no idea.

You have no idea.

We actually didn't imagine that,

that what they would

Do was total shutdown.

We figured, like we as naive

technology guys

Went this is really cool.

So the music business

Is gonna try to find some sort

of business model

Around this, right?

Wow, downloading music

for free is awesome!

What the hell is that?

I don't know, let me check

[Crash]

Freeze, f-B-I!

Down on the ground!

Down on the ground!

Hands, let me see those hands!

My initial resistance

to the new services

Created on line was based

on the debate

Having been framed

in terms of piracy.

Being labeled as such

by the record companies,

It understandably sent

a ripple effect of panic

Throughout the

artistic community.

They thought we just

had some big hard drive

Full of music.

And we were just you know,

pirating everything.

Like as if we'd gone and

[Stammers] as if we'd sat there

and put cds and

Ripped them for months and months

and months and months and then

Lo and behold,

we had the entire library of all

Recorded music and

we were giving it away.

Our users are exchanging

content um, and we

We at napster

never come in contact

With any of the music

that people are, are,

Are distributing.

So...

and not only that,

but we're also fully compliant

The digital millennium

copyright act,

Which requires us to

remove infringement links

When recording to us.

We were used to piracy,

But there was a quick remedy.

The r-I, double a

Recording industry

association of america

Would get in touch with the fbi,

they'd do a raid,

They'd take it and then

four blocks later,

They'd go set up again.

So we dealt with, with piracy.

But it was piracy

in the hundreds

Or the thousands.

It wasn't piracy in the millions

And tens of millions

and ultimately, billions.

That's scary.

This is a company

that is building a business

You know, they've got

venture capital money.

They're out on wall street,

looking for financing.

This isn't, you know,

just a, a sweet, young guy,

Who's looking for some fun

in his college dorm room.

They're building a business.

By facilitating the stealing

of artists' music.

A lot of the uncertainty,

i think uh, the, i'm sure,

Plenty of lawyers and others,

all kind of put the,

The industry in a place

where it felt like

It needed some protection

or some control,

To at least exert control

long enough to figure out

What to make of this and

play it safe and i think

Unfortunately,

that led to the missing

Of really big opportunity.

I can get that the labels

were afraid,

It was so new, it was so fast,

That, and, and they

have control issues.

With legal agreements

and this thing

Was like a hacker.

It was, you,

There are no nation

state boundaries

On the internet.

Right? You can't,

Laws don't really apply to them

Unless you can find them.

For me, it was not about

piracy and consumers

Stealing

intellectual property right.

For me, it was like

how great must music be

That these people

are coming together

And sharing

their taste of music.

And the press about

napster was controversial

And misleading.

It was all about control, power

And how can we protect

our existing

Business model.

I think napster

had 60 million customers

Uh, or people you know,

which were...

getting their music

through napster.

And uh, that seemed

like an incredible opportunity.

But because the major eight

record labels were

Unable to come to any terms

with them,

They essentially burned it,

burned it down.

I think like any,

anything in the world,

Those big innovations

rarely come from

The big companies that are

already dominating

That game. Because it's not

in their interest

To completely reinvent

what they're doing there,

So they become actually,

very complacent.

The music business is a great,

great example

Of, of that.

Of just complacency being

A total uh, death sentence.

The five global heads

of the companies at the time

Most likely, couldn't agree

That today was wednesday.

And for different reasons.

People had different ideas

People had different visions

And no one was used to this

And the word ambush

happened a lot of times

In the conversations that

we had with everybody.

The record business

was kind of ambushed.

However we want to look at it.

And you gotta deal

with an ambush.

You dealt with pearl harbor,

You gotta deal with it, right?

There was no awareness

That something like

this was coming.

Uh, even though uh,

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