Napster
It's from 1999, before you were born.
- Maker
- Shawn Fanning & Sean Parker
- Type
- Peer-to-peer music sharing
- Debuted
- 1999
- Note
- A college kid's project that rattled an industry
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About
As of 2026, it's 27 years old.
Napster launched in 1999 and let everyone trade MP3s for free, which the world loved roughly as much as the record industry hated it. Suddenly you could download any song imaginable, assuming you were patient enough to wait twenty minutes on dial-up and didn't mind a file secretly labeled as the wrong band.
It also kicked off some legendary lawsuits, with Metallica famously taking the stand against their own fans. By 2001 the courts had pulled the plug, but the genie was very much out of the bottle.
Napster was the wildfire that burned the old music business down and accidentally lit the way to every streaming service you pay for today.
Napster through the years
Launch
Shawn Fanning's file-sharing app spreads across dorms overnight.
Metallica sues
The band takes legal aim, turning a lawsuit into headlines.
Shut down
Courts force the original Napster offline for good.
