Napster vs. Music Industry Picture this... “ You’re at the mall looking for a Christmas present for that special someone. With only twenty dollars in your pocket, you notice a music clearance at the local HMV music store. Your eyes are drawn to a particular CD entitled the “ Temptations- Greatest Hits.” You notice the price of the album is $18.99. Your facial expression is not what it was before. To your left you notice a case of blank Compact Discs on sale for $4.99. Immediately the word “opportunity cost” rushes through your mind. You ask yourself, “ Do I spend twenty dollars that took three hours to earn to purchase the CD or spend five dollars, plus five minutes of my time to download the same album from Napster.” This is one of the many problems that most record companies are facing today. It is largely due to a program called “Napster”, which can be downloaded for no charge from the World Wide Web. This software allows music lovers around world to search and download any of their favorite songs. Napster has undergone heavy scrutiny by encouraging the distribution of downloaded music files from major record companies “free of charge”. With over thirty-two million registered members of Napster, it has become the world’s leading person-to person file sharing community and the fastest expanding on-line music website in the history of the Internet. Napster brings a high level of excitement to music fans through their easy to use website which provides a high quality standard of service for exploring new music. Napster’s software enables users to find and share music files with convenient easy-to-use features such as Instant Messages, detailed searches and chat rooms. In 1999, a young man named Shawn Fanning who then was attending Boston’s Northeastern University as a freshman founded Napster. Through this technological invention...
