I presume most of you all are familiar with the Napster file-sharing network.

Some questions:

Anyone here use Napster to share and discover blues music?

What is your guilt ratio - do you actually buy the releases if you like what you hear on Napster?

Do ya think that Napster helps the small artists to get discovered, ... kills the revenue for big artists?

With the court ruling yesterday against Napster, things are likely to (once again) change the landscape of the music biz.

I'll post my complete opinion tomorrow, gotta get some shuteye

Though that may be the case with some of the elder musicians, I could not bring myself to download anything for fear of taking away from those receiving fair royalty checks nowadays.

Do not wish to screw any artists out of money rightfully theirs.

When Napster creator Shawn Fanning originally developped the tool, I doubt he realized to what level he would be creating the proverbial killer app. The Napster concept is the classic success story; a simple tool, a simple concept with a simple interface. The simplicity of the concept lends itself to acceptance by the masses. Napster was founded in May '99, and here we are after barely 2 years - 50 million registered users, and 8-9 terabytes of music being shared at any given time.

What irks me is that big old corporate America (hello giant recording labels) were overcome by fear of technology change. Instead of embracing this new medium, they decided to fight it. In addition, they decided to fight it only after the technology achieved critical mass in terms of numbers of consumers.

In a way, it makes me think of the so-called "war on drugs".

Napster did manage to ink a few deals with some majors, most notably Bertelsmann, and is planning on introducing an economical model based on subscription fees and subsequent royalty payments based on file-sharing statistics.

The technology is here to stay, although Napster may prove to become the innovation martyr in the history of music distribution.

We saw this whole debacle when digital audio was first introduced to the consumer market, with DAT (digital audio tape). The labels were so fearful that they would lose 20% of their 500% profit margin, that they effectively killed what was a superb technology.

DAT now sits in pro/sumer environments, thanks to the industry's tactics of copy protection schemes, limiting the distribution of DAT machines with digital i/o and so on.

They tried again with Compact Disc audio, but failed because the consumer demand prevailed.

They tried with DVD (and some companies are still trying) and failed.

Now they are trying once again to revolt against not just a media platform, but the distribution mechanism itself (i.e. your local record store vs. Napster or another Internet channel)

So perhaps my diatribe sounds anti-record label, ... I assure you, it isn't. It
is, however, against people who want to stifle innovation merely because they are afraid of it - or too happy with their old school way of making money.

Like Slim said though, the artist has to get his check. If the artist starves, then we won't have his work to enjoy.

eBuddha

should be interesting to follow this case.