5 ms·
In a similar vein, Napster was also a game changer for mp3 distribution.
by Nekhrimah 6y ago
In a similar vein, Napster was also a game changer for mp3 distribution.
- ta1234567890 6y agoKazaa
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoThe only problem I had with Kazaa is how often people would rename files for reasons I'll never understand. Like...imagine downloading "The Matrix.avi", and you start playing it, and it turns out it was actually a copy of Fight Club. WHY!?
- dpcx 6y agoFor the same reason trolls are everywhere: because they can :/
- tolbish 6y agoA large chunk of the internet exists for the lulz. Imagine having to postpone your phone calls for an entire weekend in order to download a 1GB copy of Final Fantasy 7 on a crappy 32 kbps dial-up connection, only to open up the game and realize you got Leisure Suit Larry 6.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoI was lucky enough that we had a second phone line dedicated to the modem.
- gxqoz 6y agoOne thing I liked about Napster and the like is that bootlegs and B-sides circulated along with the official releases. I miss not having these on Spotify. Yes, there are official live albums on there. And yes, you can still find these bootlegs elsewhere. But there's enough friction that I rarely do this.
- aksss 6y agoYeah, Napster's value still hasn't been replaced in full. I remember pulling some obscure song from another endpoint halfway around the planet and then being able to browse their music collection, which turned me on to other cool music. You can kind of do the same thing on spotify by following people and playlists, but it's not the same discovery magic that Napster had, especially for obscure or hyper-local stuff. I'm not enough of a music nerd anymore to care as much these days, but Napster really was the cat's venerable pj's back then.
- joombaga 6y agoI'm pretty sure there were servers out there taking incoming search strings and slapping them on the end of file names. You could search for RANDOM_STRING and find a "britney spears matrix hot babes unsavory search (2)(1)RANDOM_STRING.mov.wmv.exe"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- flukus 6y agoFor me napster was a game changer that got me into music period. Before that discovering and learning what music I liked was tedious and low signal/noise along with high cost that I never developed any interest in music until napster existed.
- conductr 6y agoGot me into computers really. I didn’t “get” the internet prior to Napster. It felt like a toy with no real value. But I was a teenager at the time and the access to music was a game changer. I was hoarding so much content I had to learn how to build my own systems and storage solutions. I used to download video content (music videos, live concerts, etc) from IRC too around this time.