Photo credit should read THOMAS LOHNES/DDP/AFP via Getty Images
How Music Got Free, the Paramount+ docuseries produced by LeBron James and Eminem highlighting the rise of Napster and Internet piracy in music, will debut June 11.
Founded in 1999, Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing service that created arguably the biggest change in music industry history. Decades of a structured progression, starting with records, moving to cassettes and finally CDs, went poof overnight as anyone with an internet connection and computer could download files and then burn them onto CDs.
Soon after, music began leaking onto Napster before its planned release, causing album sales to plummet. The music industry swiftly took action, and Napster folded in 2002—just three years after it was founded.
However, the proverbial toothpaste was out of the tube and sales for physical copies of music never recovered. Copycat peer-to-peer sites popped up all over the internet, and eventually people were able to download full albums via torrents.
The introduction of music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music has largely crippled piracy, but the finances of the music industry never recovered. Fans once paid $10-15 to buy one album; they now have the entire music catalog of every artist on the planet for the same price.
Streaming revenue for artists also pales in comparison to album sales; most musicians now make their money off of touring and merchandise, rather than by releasing albums.
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