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ICYMI: Napster Died. The Hunger It Created Didn't
Writer and historian Ed Conroy on what Napster actually opened up for music fans beyond the free, and why the resentment and entitlement it created have never left the way we think about paying for music.
For Ed, the real revolution wasn't the price. It was Aladdin's cave: live recordings, unreleased albums, European EP editions, things a music obsessive could spend a lifetime hunting and never find. Napster made them available overnight, and once that happened there was no going back regardless of what the courts decided.
Within an hour of Napster going dark, something else appeared. The…
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