Twenty-five years ago, a federal court decision forced one of the most popular apps on the internet to begin shutting down. The platform had tens of millions of users and had taken over college campuses across the country. What made it so popular was also what made it illegal: it let people download music from other users' computers, for free, without permission.
That app was Napster, the peer-to-peer file-sharing service that fundamentally changed how people thought about music.
TIME Magazine Cover, October 2, 2000: Napster’s Shawn Fanning pic.twitter.com/JQUh7Zrtv9
— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) October 2, 2024On March 6, 2001, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered Napster to remove all copyrighted material from its platform after a wave of lawsuits from the music industry. It was the beginning of the end. Napster had no realistic way to filter copyrighted songs out of its massive network, and on July 11, 2001, Napster shut down its file-sharing service.
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The whole thing had only existed for two years. Napster launched on June 1, 1999, created by Shawn Fanning, a college freshman at Northeastern University, and his friend Sean Parker, who would later become the first president of Facebook. The concept was straightforward: search for a song, and Napster would find it on someone else's computer and transfer the file directly to yours.
25 years ago Napster launched changing the music industry forever. Here's co-founder Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning talking about it. pic.twitter.com/MsOcogVERZ
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) June 1, 2024It caught on fast. At its peak, Napster had roughly 80 million registered users, according to The Guardian. On some college campuses, Napster traffic accounted for as much as half of all internet bandwidth as students traded MP3 files across dorm rooms.
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The music industry came for it hard. In April 2000, Metallica filed a lawsuit after a demo of its unreleased song "I Disappear" leaked on the platform and started circulating on radio stations before the band had even put it out. Dr. Dre filed a similar suit weeks later. Then the Recording Industry Association of America sued Napster on behalf of major record labels, pushing the fight into federal court.
Photo credit should read AFP/AFP via Getty Images
Napster lost. But the idea didn't go anywhere.
After the shutdown, platforms like LimeWire and Kazaa popped up immediately. Then Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in 2003, with Steve Jobs telling the industry that Napster had "demonstrated that the internet was made for music delivery." In 2008, Spotify launched a subscription-based streaming model that now dominates how people listen to music worldwide. Its founder, Daniel Ek, has said he became "infatuated" with Napster as a teenager and built Spotify around the idea of making "a better product than piracy."
As for Napster itself, the brand has been bought and sold multiple times since its original shutdown. Most recently, immersive tech company Infinite Reality purchased it for $207 million in 2025 and, in January 2026, abruptly shut down its music streaming service entirely to pivot to AI. Users who were mid-listen got a splash screen telling them Napster was no longer a music streaming service. Fanning, notably, is not part of the current company's leadership. He has continued working in tech as an entrepreneur and angel investor.
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