28 The New Ecology
volumes about the future direction of the organisation: the company
that had been founded in the garage of Steve Jobs’s childhood home in
Los Altos to build the original Apple I computer would in essence become a producer of luxury consumer devices, and its first major success
in this field was with the iPod.
In 1981, Apple had paid $80,000 to Apple Corps Ltd, the multimedia
corporation founded by the Beatles, and promised to stay out of the
music industry (so much so that throughout the 1980s, engineers and
managers at Apple were suspicious of even developing audio systems on
the Mac or software to burn CDs
65
). With the return of Jobs, however,
the dynamic between the music industry and the hardware company was
to shift completely. While MP3 players had started to become widely
available in the late 1990s, none would perform as well as the iPod.
When Apple made the decision to enter the market in 2000, digital music players were worth $80 million in the US alone, rising to $100 million in 2001.
66
The original iPod met only with limited success – and,
with hindsight, was clearly a piece of hardware with a limited future
as smartphones became more widely available – but with the launch of
iTunes as an accompanying piece of software for managing and, more
importantly, downloading music, Apple was finally able to shift the music industry landscape in its favour. With regard to digital music, Apple
was not really the innovator at all although, for a decade, it would be
the main benefactor of the changing ecology in which music was distributed and consumed: the dubious accolade of true innovator belonged to
Napster.
Founded by Shawn Fanning in 1999, Napster comprised a peer-topeer file-sharing service that enabled users more easily to share MP3
files between each other. Although not the first file-sharing service
(Usenet had allowed such activity since the 1970s), Napster revolutionised the ease with which music could be transferred between participants. Commentators such as John Alderman were right to believe that
the music industry was about to undergo a radical transformation; they
were, however, wrong to believe that Napster would benefit.
67
Faced
with insurmountable legal challenges from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to prevent the transfer of copyrighted material, the Napster network was shut down in 2001 and, despite various
attempts to relaunch as a legitimate file-sharing service, it was declared
bankrupt in 2002. Yet while the head of the hydra was cut off, many
more would spring up in its place – file-sharing services such as Gnutella, Kazaa, Limewire, and Freenet appeared and frequently disappeared
in the space of months, demonstrating a growing hunger for digital music that the major record labels refused to accommodate. During the
post-war period, the music industry had – a few years aside – solidified
into an apparently stable monopoly comprising the “Big Five”: EMI,
Sony Music (formerly CBS), BMG, Universal Music Group (formerly
volumes about the future direction of the organisation: the company
that had been founded in the garage of Steve Jobs’s childhood home in
Los Altos to build the original Apple I computer would in essence become a producer of luxury consumer devices, and its first major success
in this field was with the iPod.
In 1981, Apple had paid $80,000 to Apple Corps Ltd, the multimedia
corporation founded by the Beatles, and promised to stay out of the
music industry (so much so that throughout the 1980s, engineers and
managers at Apple were suspicious of even developing audio systems on
the Mac or software to burn CDs
65
). With the return of Jobs, however,
the dynamic between the music industry and the hardware company was
to shift completely. While MP3 players had started to become widely
available in the late 1990s, none would perform as well as the iPod.
When Apple made the decision to enter the market in 2000, digital music players were worth $80 million in the US alone, rising to $100 million in 2001.
66
The original iPod met only with limited success – and,
with hindsight, was clearly a piece of hardware with a limited future
as smartphones became more widely available – but with the launch of
iTunes as an accompanying piece of software for managing and, more
importantly, downloading music, Apple was finally able to shift the music industry landscape in its favour. With regard to digital music, Apple
was not really the innovator at all although, for a decade, it would be
the main benefactor of the changing ecology in which music was distributed and consumed: the dubious accolade of true innovator belonged to
Napster.
Founded by Shawn Fanning in 1999, Napster comprised a peer-topeer file-sharing service that enabled users more easily to share MP3
files between each other. Although not the first file-sharing service
(Usenet had allowed such activity since the 1970s), Napster revolutionised the ease with which music could be transferred between participants. Commentators such as John Alderman were right to believe that
the music industry was about to undergo a radical transformation; they
were, however, wrong to believe that Napster would benefit.
67
Faced
with insurmountable legal challenges from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to prevent the transfer of copyrighted material, the Napster network was shut down in 2001 and, despite various
attempts to relaunch as a legitimate file-sharing service, it was declared
bankrupt in 2002. Yet while the head of the hydra was cut off, many
more would spring up in its place – file-sharing services such as Gnutella, Kazaa, Limewire, and Freenet appeared and frequently disappeared
in the space of months, demonstrating a growing hunger for digital music that the major record labels refused to accommodate. During the
post-war period, the music industry had – a few years aside – solidified
into an apparently stable monopoly comprising the “Big Five”: EMI,
Sony Music (formerly CBS), BMG, Universal Music Group (formerly