The Bad Guys Continue To Spin The History Of Napster

O’Reilly Media can generally be described as “the bad guys” in my book. They invented a buzzword (Web 2.0), built an entire industry around it, charge outrageous conference fees, revised history so as not to acknowledge anything that occurred on the Web prior to the first bubble, and when they do acknowledge that stuff, it’s in grossly exaggerated ways.

As you might notice on this website, Cyber Hipsters revising history to further their agendas is a bit of a theme here.

Today we have something from one of the co-founders of O’Reilly Media’s venture capital firm, O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures, saying something mildly offensive. Not to mention horribly inaccurate:

“Love or hate Sean Parker, the guy has been at the center of a few storms that have had Katrina-like effects on the industries they’ve touched.”

So, I take it Sean Parker and the companies he’s founded have murdered a bunch of people in New Orleans and caused an entire city’s population to relocate, most of them forever?

Katrina-like. Really?

Sean Parker is known for three things in the Valley, participating in Napster (although what his involvement was there is hotly debated), starting Plaxo (which bombed, but gave people the idea to scrape your address book and having you invite them to use the service. This has since been copied by every service from Gmail to Facebook). Parker was also president of Facebook. 

And with Facebook, again, it’s not clear what he did (and what he didn’t do). It depends on who is telling the story.

Listen, the guy is a billionaire and he leads a life most people want. I think that’s awesome, and I don’t hate Sean Parker. I’m actually a fan because whether or not his involvement with some of these companies is exaggerated, he’s certainly done enough to contribute to the history of the Web.

What I can’t stand though is the hyperbole (“Katrina-like”) that always surrounds Parker, which is created by those in the Valley and those who cover it, and the distortion of that history.

So here’s more distortion of the history of Napster by the O’Reilly venture capital guy:

“I remember the first time I used Napster. It was a transformational experience. I had never ripped a CD or created an MP3 myself. And yet here, in one interface, all of the complexity of converting analog to digital was removed. Just as powerfully, every song I could think to search for was available. It was amazing. It was powerful.”

Never ripped a CD? Really? Because everyone in high schools across America was doing it in 1999. This is yet another example of the age gap between those of us who grew up using the Web, and those who dominate the Valley.

They like to praise “the kids” like Parker so they look hip, and talk about how great shit is that we all used and don’t remember being so great. Facebook is a great example of this.

Napster is another. But since Napster, as we’re all referring to it here, is dead, it’s easier to lie about.

I’ll give you that Napster was easy to use, but do you remember what a bitch it was using Napster at dial-up speeds? That part always gets cut out of the story.

Napster is now universally described as magical, but the rest of the story always gets left out. Every song you can think of was NOT on Napster. Usually you only had access to what other people put up there, and that was usually more popular acts (not to mention songs by bands no one heard or, or has head of since, under the name of popular bands.)

And let’s not forget that the sound quality of most songs on Napster was fucking terrible. Provided you didn’t download a virus instead of your favorite song.

As far as the spread of Napster goes, the other Sean (who created Napster) had the help from his Dad (creator of a popular Chess network) to spread the service in the Valley, and Sean had his network at college to spread the service there. Between the two, and things like the Metallica lawsuit, Napster took off. Had none of those factors been in place, there’s no way of knowing if we’d even be talking about Napster today.

“At the time Napster launched the combined market caps of music labels were roughly $45B. Today that total hovers around $14B and continues to slide.”

So, you’re inferring that Napster was responsible for this, and not the consolidation of record labels, the consolidation of all large private music venues in America under Clear Channel (not to mention 1,200 radio stations), and the fact that albums regularly retailed for $20+ in the late ’90s?

Oh, and how about the loss of VH1 and MTV as music-only outlets? With the radio consolidation, not to mention rampant pay-for-play scams, people were exposed to less and less music, and the stuff they were exposed to? Most of it sucked.

Then there’s Apple and the iPod, which cannibalized music prices and the studies that started to come out around the same time, and continue to be released, that show people who download music *gasp* buy more music!

Those studies also showed that people pirate for three reasons:

1. If they can’t get the product through legal means. (Most of them were usually international fans who had to pay more for albums by American artists)

2. If the product is too expensive. (Most people here. Remember: CDs were stupidly expensive in the late ’90s / early ’00s and a lot of them were bad, which is why people only wanted a song or two. It wasn’t about the desire to “unbundle” things.

The success of Napster was born out of frustration over getting shit, being overcharged for that shit, and only wanting the one or two songs you liked. Had consumer choices not been so awful in terms of artists and albums, the “unbundling” wouldn’t even be an issue. 

3. If they want to protest against that company. (The minority of users. Although it’s speculation on my part, you can infer they weren’t going to buy the album anyway).

And, of course, there was also the post 9/11 recession that lasted until 2004 and now the financial quagmire we’re in today.

So let me ask you something, do you really think the loss of revenue for the music business was all Sean Parker (maybe) and Napster’s doing?

Oh, and then this was said: “The tools for producing, distributing and marketing artists which were once held tightly by only a select few are at the fingertips of even the newest of n00b.”

I can swear I just wrote a whole book about that one …

That awkward moment when you realize you should have deleted your web history before you let your friend use your computer.