Shawn Fanning
Shawn Fanning
Shawn Fanningis an American computer programmer, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peerfile sharing platforms, in 1999. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth22 November 1980
CityBrockton, MA
CountryUnited States of America
american-businessman labels music trend
Independent artists and labels have always been the trend setters in music and the music business.
american-businessman feedback friend giving people receiving spread user
I think then, when we started receiving the first of the user feedback, feedback from people that I had not specifically told about it, but had spread from friend to friend and then they were giving us feedback.
along community heard love million music napster people share survive today works
Napster works because people who love music share and participate. Along the way, many people said it would never work. We've heard that we couldn't survive before -- when we had 700,000 members, and when we had 17 million members. Today we have more than 50 million members, and we'll all find a way to keep this community growing.
experience mac napster provides total user wrapped
Napster for the Mac provides the total Napster experience wrapped in a Mac-friendly user interface,
grateful million turn
grateful that we do not have to turn away our 20 million users.
receiving beta stage
It was very early, and we were still like beta or alpha stage, and so we started receiving a ton of download. The server became overloaded, and that's when I realized that this had a huge market.
thinking numbers people
I think the most difficult thing had been scaling the infrastructure. Trying to support the response we had received from our users and the number of people that were interested in using the software.
regret school ideas
That's why I ended up leaving school - because it required so much time, and it was such an excellent idea. I figured I would regret not going full force with this idea. It seemed we could make something of it.
thinking media brilliant
But I just really think there is a natural extension into other types of media because it's an excellent system for reliably locating and retrieving content.
thinking ideas issues
There really was nothing like it at the time. We had good ideas for implementation, so we proceeded. I think it was an excellent solution to the reliability issues with existing search engines.
successful doe actors
If you're a musician or actor, you know that if you're successful, some level of fame goes along with that. You're prepared. But how often does that happen to a programmer?
thinking media data
I think it's pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific, but I could see a system like Napster evolving into something that allows users to locate and retrieve different types of data other than just MP3s or audio files.
people napster music-love
Napster works because people who love music share and participate.
design today clients
Unfortunately, the client that exists today is still pretty much the prototype design.