Napster

Every song in the world, free, right now

Shut down
19902026

Napster was the P2P file-sharing service that made MP3 sharing a mass phenomenon, launched in June 1999 by 18-year-old Shawn Fanning. At its peak it had around 80 million registered users. Sued by the RIAA and Metallica, it was forced offline by court order in July 2001, barely two years after launch.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 1999
  2. June 1999 Launch
    Napster released

    P2P MP3 sharing app by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker.

  3. 7 December 1999 Legal
    RIAA sues Napster

    The record industry files suit for contributory copyright infringement.

  4. 2000
  5. 13 April 2000 Legal
    Metallica sues Napster

    The band files suit after an unreleased demo circulates; the case makes file sharing a mainstream story.

  6. 26 July 2000 Legal
    Judge orders Napster shut down

    Injunction by Judge Patel; stayed on appeal two days later.

  7. 31 October 2000 Funding
    Bertelsmann alliance

    The German media giant loans Napster $50 million to build a licensed service while litigation continues.

  8. 2001
  9. February 2001 Peak
    Peaks around 26.4 million users worldwide

    Media Metrix measurement in February 2001, the month the appeals court ruling lands.

  10. 12 February 2001 Legal
    Ninth Circuit upholds liability

    Napster must remove copyrighted works from the network.

  11. 1 July 2001 Shutdown
    Napster takes its network offline

    Unable to comply with filtering requirements, the service shuts down.

  12. 11 July 2001 Legal
    Court orders Napster to stay offline

    Judge Marilyn Hall Patel rules that Napster must remain offline until its filters can block every infringing file. The service never comes back.

  13. 2002
  14. 3 June 2002 Legal
    Napster files for Chapter 11

    A planned sale to Bertelsmann is blocked by the court; the company liquidates.

  15. 27 November 2002 Acquisition
    Roxio buys the Napster brand in bankruptcy

    The name is recycled for a legal download store.

  16. 2003
  17. 29 October 2003 Revival
    Napster 2.0 launches as a paid store

    Roxio relaunches the brand as a licensed music service.

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: napster.com, 8 October 1999 →

Browse napster.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

1999 2000 2001 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Napster, Inc. 1999–2002 Founded Filed for Chapter 11 in June 2002
Roxio 2002–2001 Bankruptcy sale, $5.3M Brand and IP only; the P2P service was already dead

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Registered accounts ▲ 80 million February 2001 Reported Peak, around the time of the appeals ruling

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Federal courts ordered Napster to stop the exchange of copyrighted material; unable to filter reliably, it took the service offline in July 2001.

Our analysis: Napster was killed by copyright law, not by users leaving. It proved the demand for digital music years before the industry was willing to sell it, and its 26 months of existence reshaped music distribution permanently.

History [edit]

26 months that changed music

Shawn Fanning wrote Napster in a dorm-room sprint and released it in June 1999. It indexed every user's MP3 folder into one searchable network, and suddenly every song ever recorded felt one click away. Nothing on the internet had grown that fast before: tens of millions of users within a year, university networks buckling under the traffic.

The lawsuits

The RIAA sued in December 1999, Metallica followed in 2000, and in July 2000 Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered the service shut down (an appeals court granted a stay two days later). The reprieve ended in 2001: ordered to filter all copyrighted material and unable to do so, Napster switched off its network on 1 July 2001, was ordered on 11 July to stay dark, and filed for bankruptcy the next year. Roxio bought the name at the bankruptcy auction and reused it for a legal music store. The P2P wave it started rolled on through Kazaa and LimeWire, and the industry spent a decade fighting users before finally selling them what Napster gave away.

The domain today

napster.com belongs to an artificial intelligence company selling what it calls visible AI agents with voice, video and memory. The Napster name has been bought and resold repeatedly since 2002, most recently in 2025, and the current owner has no connection to file sharing or to the service in this entry.

Similar projects

Kazaa The post-Napster free-for-all 2001–2012 Megaupload The file locker the FBI took down 2005–2012 LimeWire Half your MP3s, half your malware 2000–2010 Shareaza The client whose own name was stolen 2002–2017 iMesh Settled, went legal, outlived everyone, left without a word 1999–2016 Oink's Pink Palace Raided by Interpol, and its founder walked free 2004–2007

Sources [edit]

  1. Napster Unplugged NPR 27 July 2000 [archived]
  2. Napster Was Forced to Shut Down by Court Order 25 Years Ago Parade (via Yahoo Entertainment) 7 March 2026 [archived]
  3. Napster — Definition, History, & Facts Encyclopaedia Britannica [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).