We all knew the day would come, the time to put the "you" in P2P: Buy your own piece of Napster at their bankruptcy auction. December 11th, live and webcast, their impressive set of top o' the line (for 2001) equipment is up for grabs.
posted by mathowie on Nov 19, 2002 - 9 comments

Music CDs sales are down, coinciding with Napster's decline. Personally, I haven't bought a new CD in months because I no longer have a source for finding new music (what I used Napster for mainly). I suppose word of mouth and listening to online streams may help, but nothing compared to finding songs you liked on Napster, and searching others' files with similar tastes and finding new gems. Do you think the RIAA will notice this and change, or is control of distribution more important to them?
posted by mathowie on Jun 20, 2001 - 30 comments

IBM, with the latest attempt to put the genie back in the bottle. Their fatal flaw is betting on a post-napster world, though I bet their EMMS technology gets cracked before that ever happens.
posted by mathowie on Jan 22, 2001 - 11 comments

Rhino Records' anti-Napster PSAs are hilarious. Almost makes you want to stop using napster ("it's just not cool").
posted by mathowie on Oct 27, 2000 - 2 comments

This just in: Napster's injunction to shut down tonight at midnight has been stayed (I'll add a url to a story when CNN writes it - BTW, how crazy is it that the napster news gets top level precedence as breaking news on a site as big as CNN? screenshot)
posted by mathowie on Jul 28, 2000 - 19 comments

Napster may be down, but pandora's out of the box, baby. Get OpenNap as soon as you can (if anyone finds a link to OpenNap, by all means post the URL)
posted by mathowie on Jul 26, 2000 - 35 comments

Napster Says RIAA Trying to Stifle Technology. Aw yeah, it's nice to see Napster get on the offensive. Armed with data showing that CD sales have increased with the rise in mp3 trading, Napster is now alleging that record companies are against the software because it reduces their 100% control of the music distribution business. But will a court allow Napster to go on while their users walk the fair-use tightrope?
posted by mathowie on Jul 4, 2000 - 23 comments

"95% of all music will be free, at least for a period…" says Chuck D, while praising the magic of Napster. I <heart> Chuck D.
posted by mathowie on May 2, 2000 - 3 comments

Another music artist that doesn't get it: Dr. Dre. I knew the Metallica thing could start a rash of followers, hopefully this isn't a trend. Why is it so difficult for artists to see that fans trading their music is a good thing? (including better sales of discs thanks to the people hearing the mp3's and better concert sales from fans buying tickets to see them live)
posted by mathowie on Apr 19, 2000 - 49 comments

WTF!?! Everyone's favorite band (back in high school) Metallica is suing Napster and a handful of universities for unlawful trading of their music. This is ridiculous, and I hope it doesn't set a precedence. If anyone would just slap a revenue model on napster so artists could get paid for their work, none of this piracy crap would happen. And Metallica, what about the other apps that do the same thing, are you going to sue them too? And what about every other band on earth? What do you expect to get out of universities, tighter controls over bandwidth, or student monitoring of internet usage? What about every cable modem and DSL provider that lets people use Napster, are you going after them too? Why don't you sue everyone on earth that's heard your songs but didn't pay for them? Side question: Is it better to burn out or fade away?
posted by mathowie on Apr 13, 2000 - 17 comments

It wasn't a question of if, but when. There's now a hacked version of napster that allows trading warez and videos (I bet every college student on a T1 is going apeshit right now).
posted by mathowie on Mar 23, 2000 - 6 comments

Rex Reed will probably be getting some bad reviews in the future, thanks to today's arrest for shoplifting CDs from a New York music store. Too bad he never got into Napster and mp3s, maybe this would have never happened. I think I own all three of those CDs, actually. Rex, I would have let you download them!
posted by mathowie on Feb 12, 2000 - 0 comments

Contrary to what the record industry thinks, mp3s sell CDs. Today I bought "Irish Drinking Songs" after hearing "Water is Alright in Tay" and "Beer, Beer, Beer" mp3s I downloaded from Napster. Hearing the beer song brought back a distinct memory. I recall hearing it blaring from a jukebox and singing along with 50 strangers at an Irish pub in San Francisco on New Year's Eve, 1998.
posted by mathowie on Jan 26, 2000 - 4 comments

If you haven't tried out Napster yet, you really should. There's also a Mac port of the program (Macster) and a Linux version. On today's journey into the Napster underworld, I was rewarded with several bizarre gems. Among other things, I found a Japanese version of "Song for the Dumped" by Ben Folds Five, Tom Hanks singing "The Cowboy Song" from the epic film "Joe Versus the Volcano", and finally, a kickass acoustic version of "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters, which sounds like it was recorded from a Howard Stern radio show. You can't buy music this quirky, I'm glad there's a venue for it with Napster.
posted by mathowie on Jan 19, 2000 - 3 comments

If you haven't heard of Napster yet, check it out. This is a killer tool, a combination mp3 player and file transfer client/server. While you play mp3s, other users can download songs from your library, while you do the same from their libraries. This is a great idea but must be a nightmare for the recording industry. This could be a really cool community tool, if everyone is generous with their music.
posted by mathowie on Oct 29, 1999 - 1 comment