Napster and Spotify
Napster is the name given to two music online services. An 18-year-old called Shaun Fanning, with the help of his uncle and friends, founded it. When it was originally founded, it was set up as a file sharing service that allowed you to share audio files, in an MP3 format. The company that originally ran Napster ran into legal difficulties, and so was eventually acquired by Roxio. Napster was relaunched as a legitimate service with royalties paid to the major music companies, and it became an online music store in its second incarnation, when it merged with Rhapsody on 1st December 2011.
Spotify is a music streaming service that offers streaming of selective music from some major and independent record labels including ‘The Big 4’: UMG, Sony, EMI and Warner Music Group. It got founded in 2006 and launched in October 2008, and has over 10 million users, over 2.5 million of who are paying customers. You can choose to have a six-month free trail period if you have a facebook account, where you can listen to an unlimited amount of music. After this has run out, the music gets limited to 10 hours per month. You can then have an ‘unlimited’ subscription which removes adverts and the time limit, and you can also have a ‘premium’ account which lets you have other features such as offline access and access to a mobile app.
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