Certainly soured a lot of people on Metallica.
I fucking love metal, but on principle will never listen to, buy, or support Metallica in any way ever. I also pass this to younger generations. I was a poor kid without a way to listen to music outside an FM radio, but this badass “thrash metal” band wanted me to pay what I didn’t have so I could listen to them.
So as a well off adult my vinyl collection grows without them.
Using Napster was one of those defining childhood memories for me. I was in junior high when it came out and I remember hearing about it through rumors at school. It was one of my early memories, realizing that computers could be used for interesting things and not just office work.
Those were the days, spending 20 minutes downloading a 3 minute song over dialup.
interesting things and not just office work
I dunno about you, but at a younger age I was definitely into, uh, “interesting things” on the computer. And games, too.
(porn, I’m talking about porn)
I’m still sullen about napster. It didn’t change anything about music sharing- other than to take music sharing into the spotlight. I.e., they got greedy and gained the attention of the media.
I was in college so…I’m old.
I argue that the real credit goes to Winamp. Napster was effectively just a slightly easier front end than an irc fserve, it was really the mp3 playback with playlists and maybe even milkdrop visualization that led to a critical mass for mp3 adoption and sharing. That later led to Napster and, ultimately, bit torrent.
But also, yeah, fuck Metallica.
Then Apple came with ipod and screwed up all my music with iTunes encrypting everything. Fuck apple forever
I just imported my CDs and online downloads from sources other than the iTunes Store (they were legal, I swear).
Honestly I liked my iPod.
