Napster

Napster was founded as a free peer-to-peerfile sharing service in June 1999 by Shawn Fanning, John Fanning and Sean Parker. Users were able to share their MP3 files free of charge.

The user-friendly service and ease of use gained global recognition in a very short time and had more than 25 million members during its most successful phase. Napster was sued for infringing copyrights on their exchanged music tracks and had to shut down the service in July 2001. By June 2002, the company was bankrupt. Roxio and later Best Buy bought the company and its naming rights and launched a paid streaming and download service under Napster.