YA Napster Essay

Things have been kinda slow around here lately, and I’ve had this on my mind, now seemed like the right time to get it online.

I am so sick of reading weblogs and articles about people going around saying. “Yeah, well, I used Napster, sure, but I only downloaded things I couldn’t find anywhere else, and I always buy my favorite bands CDs the second they come out, and I’m a good little music consumer, so I don’t really care all that much that Napster is going down the tubes…” Napster is starting to be like some sort of wrist slap-bracelet fad kinda thing. If you mention now that you actually like it and actually use it INSTEAD OF BUYING MUSIC then you’re looked at now as some sort of sick fuck who is being totally and morally wrong. Fuck that shit. I used Napster to pirate music. There. I fucking said it.

So fucking sue me (I’m sure Metallica will try) that I don’t ENJOY putting gobs and gobs of money into record executives’ pockets. Fuck those guys. As far as I’m concerned, they’re like the people that make porn: They completely and utterly live off of the fact that someone else (the musician or pornstar) has had a shitty childhood or something else bad happen in their lives. What do I mean? Let me explain. Musicians write music because they’re sad. At least all the good ones anyway. Bad Religion is infinitely better than The Backstreet Boys because the music is real and felt and written because of emotion, not marketing. I just can’t bring myself to like the idea that record execs do absolutely nothing for society. The peddle other people’s ideas and emotions and feelings. Fuck that.

So back to the point. Napster is so wildly successful on such a massive scale for a couple reasons. The average Napster user is 18-24 (I’m assuming)… The people within that age range have some things to say by using Napster. The foremost statement is that music on the radio FUCKING SUCKS. All the music coming out in the past year has been worthless. At least the stuff in mainstream channels: MTV, the radio etc. So if mainstream channels are letting us down, we go to less-accepted ‘gray’ channels. Like any peer-to-peer filesharing network. FTP sites when I was in high school, Hotline when I was in college, and Napster when I joined the workforce and had a T1 at my disposable for 8 hours a day. If the channels are there, then I’m going to use them.

I do not feel guilty at all about illegally using Napser to get music that I want to enjoy. So I liked ONE Limp Bizkit song, and wanted to put on a compilation CD. So I downloaded it from Napster, and Fred fucking Durst or the guy that decided the album was going to be recorded didn’t get one dime from me. People enjoy music. They don’t enjoy paying for it. Add to that the fact that if I wanted to listen to a specific Cure song because I thought it would help me get a design to where I want it to be, and voila. Napster is the perfect solution.

Let me reiterate the most important sentence in this post: I do not feel guilty at all about illegally using Napser to get music that I want to enjoy. Not one bit, and you shouldn’t either. If the music industry gave a flying fuck about us as people who feel the same emotions as the music we buy instead of a way to get a title to #1 on the Billboard charts, then maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be such a problem for them. But they’ve been fucking us since the 50’s and now with digital technology we have the power to fight back. And we can. And we will.

• Category: Design, Music