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Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
A quarter-century ago, Napster was the talk of the town, triggering a global piracy frenzy that never disappeared.
Invented by the German engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg and colleagues at the Fraunhofer Society, the coding format made it possible to reduce the size of music files without any significant loss of audible sound quality. At the time, manufacturing CDs with high profit margins felt like printing money and Napster’s appearance threatened to ruin the party. Like many others, Ek was fascinated by the ‘all you can play’ experience offered by file-sharing software, and that planted the seeds for the music streaming startup Spotify, where he still serves as CEO today.
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