Check these links for background: http://www.mp3.com/news/471.html http://www.napster.com
Wow..
This week (Thanks to IIABILL) I rediscovered NapSter… significantly cooler with v2.0. This is an extremely viral tool for MP3 traders. Despite my affiliations with etunnels this has to be one of the most viral applications going.
Want proof?
Last night: 89GB of MP3 files. Tonight : 1141GB of MP3 files. (And I’m having trouble connecting).
NapSter shares a directory on your PC with everyone else in the community — you need not know who they are. The client tabulates every MP3 file in your shared directory and announces the list to an index server. You and other users can search for songs and download them from each other.
It’s simple but brilliant. Imagine a world where the “Most Searched Artists” chart on NapSter is a more significant metric of an artist’s popularity than the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
This has got the RIAA utterly FREAKING out — it functionally kills the CD distribution model, the charts, everything. But NapSter can claim they’re not pirating — they never even store any files! 🙂
-Ian.