Playing Our Song?

Continued from page 1

By Henry Jenkins

July 2, 2003

What I loved about Napster was the ability to connect, often in the wee hours of the morning, with total strangers who shared my tastes and interests and to discover new music, which I would never have heard otherwise.

To understand the difference between Napster and iTunes, one has to go back to "My Bestest Friend." Seen from the producer's perspective, Napster represented only depreciation-a destruction of the value of their investments in creating new intellectual property. Yet consumers also produce value in music-through their sentimental investments and social interactions. We didn't just like "Bestest Friend"; we appreciated it-that is, we increased its value and prolonged its lifespan. Mac Davis's song remained meaningful to my wife and me long after it had passed out of radio rotation. iTunes is about music as commodity; Napster was about music as mutual experience. iTunes is about cheap downloads; Napster was about file sharing-with sharing the key word.

Napster emerged at a contradictory moment in the history of American music. On the one hand, the compactness of the CD made it possible for companies to keep a larger and larger backlist in circulation. On the other hand, U.S. radio stations were narrowing their playlist formulas as national conglomerates bought out local stations. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing the latest song by Ricky Martin, but most artists get little or no air time. Once Napster appeared, it was as if there were suddenly millions of small radio stations, whose playlists were shaped by the passions of their individual owners and not by formulas, industry trends, or demographic calculations. While I was on the Napster bandwagon, I bought more CDs than I ever had before or since because I was better informed about the range of options available to me. I don't think I ever downloaded a current hit. Most of what I accessed were songs and artists that the record companies had probably forgotten altogether. The glory of Napster was that I could discover eccentric and forgotten artists, people like the 1950s Peruvian lounge singer Yma Sumac, or the 1940s jazz composer Raymond Scott. I sampled world music, rediscovered country, experimented with techno, re-engaged with New Wave, and listened to some gifted amateurs.

Using Napster was less like going to a well-ordered and well-stocked chain store and more like rummaging through the dust-covered bins at a used record shop. A lot of what you downloaded was scratchy or warped, but sometimes, you found a real gem. Using Napster was like getting a song tape put together by someone who deeply loved every cut. By comparison, iTunes is antiseptic and impersonal-like shopping in a mall record shop at midnight when nobody else is around.