Napster. Worked there in 2000 and 2001. It was surreal (at least for me) to work at a place that was always in the news at the time. I can understand how employees at Faang must feel at times. Not a total distraction but it’s there. Napster was an interesting place.
How good a job did Justin Timberlake do in portraying Sean Parker?
Only saw Sean Parker in a meeting once (and I don’t believe I was ever introduced) so, difficult to comment on that. My sense is that he was more involved at the beginning of the service. I got involved around the time Bertelsmann made the investment in the company.
I guess technically it was a ‘convertible loan’. Whatever.
Do you have any interesting stories about your time there?
We were working on the new commercial services in both client and server components. So perhaps the most interesting aspect was the general tension between those who felt strongly about the original intent and purpose of the service, and those who felt that it needed a commercial function that would appease the music industry rights holders. That said, I met many great engineers there , many who have gone on to their own fame and fortune. From a technical perspective it was quite enlightening also. I had never even heard of non-blocking io before I worked on that stuff. The scale was nothing I had ever seen before. Largely taken for granted today. Most of what we understand and experience today about consumption of music was really determined by what happened there both from legal and technical perspectives.