"Quick: tell me how old you are by telling me which app you used to download free music. Was it Napster? Kazaa? Usenet? Gnutella? WinMX? Morpheus? The Pirate Bay? Were you, I don't know, sending your friends songs on AIM or BBM? The possibilities are endless. For a decade or so, if you were online, you were probably stealing music."
"LimeWire was, in many ways, designed specifically not to be Napster, with designs on something much more legitimate and business-focused. The company tried over and over to figure out how to make money, and to create something that actually sounds a lot like music streaming, but it became embroiled in the same fight that had been raging for a decade. Once Grokster went down, LimeWire never really had a chance. And besides, an entirely new way of listening to music was right around the corner."
Mainstream free music access began with services like Napster and extended across many peer-to-peer networks and sharing platforms. LimeWire aimed to differentiate itself from earlier services by pursuing legitimacy, business models, and features resembling streaming. The company repeatedly attempted to monetize the service and shift toward a more commercially viable product, but it became embroiled in longstanding legal battles over copyright. The Supreme Court decision against Grokster weakened the legal position of file-sharing clients, leaving LimeWire vulnerable. As litigation mounted, established industry shifts toward licensed streaming services further undermined LimeWire’s prospects and ended the era of mainstream file-sharing.
Read at The Verge
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