Yes piracy is bad and all but as a college student, Napster was such as life saver. You could literally download any song you wanted to listen to. I also remember another application called Kazaa that was popular as well (circa 2000-2002ish)
I think audiogalaxy was the real pioneer in p2p. Audiogalaxy satellite, IIRC, ran an ftp server on your machine while at the same time indexed your files and sent the list to audiogalaxy, the web service. From there, anyone could search for mp3 and download from users currently on-line. It was the begining.
It soon became very clear the problems of centralization for this purpose, decentralized networks thrived. Most proprietary implementation eventually died. The open ones, emule and gnutella2, although a small shadow of what they were, are still alive.
In the meantime bittorrent evolved and the industry had to bow to streaming services.
But, if anyone still wants to "fell the napster taste", the closest I know today is soulseek. There's a good client, called nicotine+, that works very well last time I tried.
Audiogalaxy felt magical to use at the time. Being able to leave the Satellite running at home, queue up songs to download from school via the web site, and listen to them by the time you're back home, was... incredible. There was truly nothing like it back then.
It also had a much larger indie community than Napster. I discovered so much good music on Ag that I still listen today.
I remember Audiogalaxy, but cannot remember if it was before, after or basically concurrent with Napster..? Guess couldn’t have been before because Napster was the first right?
Almost the same time, Napster was slightly earlier, at least in adoption for me and my friends. Audiogalaxy was better but didn't catch on as much, that's when things really started fracturing.
I used napster in junior college and audiogalaxy at my 4-year, so at least for me, Napster was first, but there was some time when both were around and usable.
Audiogalaxy had a Linux server as well, IIRC. And it preferred transfers from nearby networks (assuming they were numbered contiguously anyway), which was nice for popular stuff so it wouldn't clog external connections in dorms. Also nice that it showed you all the different versions so you could get both versions when bands made a shame on you release.
I don't like the use of the term "piracy". Piracy is taking a vessel. Common crimes committed by pirates are homicide, kidnapping, rape... It is all very different from copying a file to someone.
Of course, "the industry" doesn't care equating one with another.
I don't like this sort of argument against using the term "piracy". Words change meaning over time, what you're saying is like saying that we shouldn't call people "nice" because it used to mean something different (formerly an insult, apparently). When I hear "piracy" having grown up with computers the first thing that comes to my mind is not pirates taking control or a vessel on the high seas, but rather what pops in to my head is the pirate bay and other sites I've known over the years.
Also this same guy managed to acquire the rights for Subspace from VIE. It was rebranded as Continuum. I started playing Subspace as a teenager on v1.34 and continued to enjoy it through college thanks in large part to Priit’s efforts. I still log in every year or so and many of the same folks still play. It wasn’t just saving a game, but a community.
