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 avid excellent few people sending software user work
Well, user feedback was excellent. Even when the software didn't work at all, there were few people who were avid users, and there were people who were just sending excellent feedback and excellent ideas.
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.
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.
people napster music-love
Napster works because people who love music share and participate.
media space people
Nobody has ever built a reliable peer-to-peer service, where people can really access all the music they want in one location,... Once I got it into my head, I couldn't imagine the media space without one.
american-businessman time understood widely
I understood an idea like this could become popular, but at the same time I didn't think it was my implementation that would be so widely used.
believe invested understood vision
Bertelsmann understood our vision when they first invested in us. They still believe in that vision.
believe invested understood vision
Bertelsmann understood our vision when they first invested in us, ... They still believe in that vision.
agreement along close moving napster phase step
We're close to moving into a new phase of Napster and this agreement is an important step along the way.
american-businessman prototype sure took
I wasn't really sure that my implementation of it would be what really took off, but fortunately I was able to get a prototype done.
grateful leadership music showing technology using
I am grateful they are now showing that leadership when it comes to using technology to make music more accessible.
american-businessman basic design drafting feedback playing university
I was at Northeastern University playing with the idea and getting feedback from my roommates, and then started drafting a really basic design idea.
american-businessman approach concrete deciding public released saying schools shut
It's been all over the press, and schools are deciding to shut it down. We released a public announcement saying that we had some potential solutions that we were working with, and once we had something concrete we would start implementing it and approach schools.