Why I Don't Steal Anymore

Many of us in our 30's would say that the golden days of the internet were back in the 90's. These joy-filled days revolved around 1 website: Napster.

You could say that we were a part of the internet hippie generation. Those were good times. There was peace, and love, and music... oh there was music. I'm talking about music that we shared because it was beautiful and it was meant to be shared. We weren't going to let evil record labels screw musicians anymore! We took over that task. Actually, we felt like musicians weren't in it for the money. They wanted us to have their music. Willie Nelson even promoted free downloads of his music on his own website. We downloaded music for Willie and figured that his friends wanted us to support them as well. And we did. I really supported the Beatles, Pearl Jam, and countless other artists. I remember joyfully dancing around my computer watching the race that took place between the 60 or so songs I would have slowly reaching for completion. 60 songs was about the most I could do on my dial-up at one time.

The evil record labels didn't know what to do. They sat in their Donald Trump-like conference rooms with bad lighting and lots of smoke and tried to figure out how to stop this. The nice thing is that big business back then moved as fast as the Titanic avoiding icebergs.

After 2 years of meetings, the executives had a brilliant plan... sue! Sue the living tar out of Napster, but better yet, sue the people downloading the music and hang their dead, broke carcases up in the middle of town so everyone could see what happens to sinners.

That's when it hit us. Maybe it was illegal to download an undisclosed amount of music for free. That ordinary kid who just got sued by the record labels and settled for $10k could've been me. It could've been any of us. And where were the artists who we were supporting by downloading their music for free? They were no where to be found. They left us out to dry. Frankly, they screwed us.

A Fork in the Road
There were 3 divisions that took place when Napster was finally taken down. One group was scared straight. They cleaned off their computers of the evidence and got jobs and you probably work with one of them and you don't even know it. The second group started buying songs. A few pre-iTunes sites began to welcome people to buy music. This didn't make sense to me. NO ONE, not even today's iTunes, had the selection that Napster had, and now you had to pay for it; less selection, more money. The third group were the guys that went underground and continue to this day to 'live on the edge' and download music (and now MOVIES!) for free.

Napster With a DJ
Online radio came eventually. I particularly enjoyed live365.com. The only thing different about online radio is that there were no audio ads (typically) and a much larger selection of music than you can get through terrestrial radio. Then came Pandora. Pandora has a very simple interface. You plug in a song you like or a particular artist, and they play music that may have similar characteristics. From experience, they are extremely good. If by chance they pick a bad one, give it a 'thumbs down' rating and you won't hear that song again. Continue to rate songs as they come up and it will help Pandora refine the selection it presents. Also, you can create as many stations as you want.

Napster was nice because if you heard an artist that you liked his song, you could download a dozen songs from him to explore him further. Pandora is better than that. I've actually discovered more artists through Pandora without having to sift through tons of downloads to do it. The glory days of Napster are definitely behind us, but hopefully Pandora will be with us for years to come... but that is still to be determined.