Musicians are furious that new tech has gutted their income. Record labels are wary, yet eager to cut deals with ascendant platforms. Fans are delighted to access songs for a pittance, even as they’re screwing over beloved artists. The fears about today’s streaming economy echo the existential panic when Napster debuted in 1999. The peer-to-peer service — where fans swapped catalogs of MP3 song files — walloped the record business.
It didn’t have strong, clear leadership.” But they knew there was a legitimate business to be built in paid digital access to songs, even as labels were reluctant to break apart the lucrative CD model. If just a tiny fraction of Napster users bought records they discovered there, and labels could reach them with granular data about their tastes, it could be transformative. “Napster knew more about the customer than the labels did,” Menn said.