Introduction
Napster changed the music business for ever. The "old" Napster (versus the "new" pay model) had explosive growth delivering purloined tracks to the masses. As the following graph shows, the "service" went from zero to over 25 million unique users in less than one year.
Just to drive home the point that Napster started the ball rolling, consider this quote:
While few participated prior to 1999, the founding year of Napster, in 2006 there were about ten million simultaneous users on the major peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.1
Before we leave Napster, it might be enlightening to consider that if the RIAA hadn't "killed" Napster, iTunes probably would never have happened. In other words, it took the RIAA suing old Napster out of business to set the stage for the development and implementation of what is today the largest seller of legal music in the world2.
| This is the fundamental point of this entire website. Stop illegal file sharing and the whole music industry will come roaring back. |
Napster's Impact On Music Sales
Let's look at the data. The following table presents the top selling albums of all time per the RIAA.
Notice that not a single album was released past 1999—the year Napster was born. If we take a close look at the release dates, here's what we find:
* 1 From the Sixties
* 10 From the Seventies
* 6 From the Eighties
* 8 From the Nineties
