Napster & MP3: Redefining The Music Industry

Introduction

Napster was the first, very innovative music technology application that allowed users to download MP3 from the internet and other peers for free, or at a cost. Napster strongly adapted the word sharing and put it their own terms to avoid any copyright infringement but it ended badly on their part. This disruptive technology was leading the market and had over 60 million users by 2001. Although very similar technologies were soon after developed, Napster was still on top and lead the market. Many users knew exactly what they wanted but getting it seemed to be the difficult part once Napster and the RIAA went into a legal battle. More commonly, the industry has been shaped …show more content…

The level of effort matters to the customers when creating their next masterpiece of an album and if they weren’t getting the compensation they feel they deserve, it would be hard to justify a very complete, well written album. Customers are winners during the industry transformation. As for the biggest winner, I believe digital retail has won in this category. Apple and Microsoft have both done an amazing job with allowing iTunes to properly run on both of their software where it is so extremely easy to access any song, album, artists, video, TV show, movie, you name that a person could possible think of. To have a song on there takes a very small amount of work for Apple and it is one of the most genius programs to every be invented by one of the most powerful companies we will ever come across. At this time, if you were to watch a TV reality singing show, for example, X-factor, and you see a live performance you really enjoy, you can literally go on iTunes the very next day and purchase that specific person singing that very song. The digital retail market is only growing and technology has done something so amazing by growing the concept of Napster into something that can yield such amazing results. This is by far the biggest winner of the music industry transformation.

4. From the perspective of the stakeholder who stands to lose, is there anything you can do to change this?

From the perspective of the stakeholders in