Napster
- Product Type: P2P Music Sharing System
Honestly, we hate to put Napster on this failed tech products list because they literally helped to change music distribution for the better. Rather than having to buy full albums, you could download single songs for free through Napster’s peer-to-peer sharing system. As the digital age began in the late 1990s/early 2000s, Napster entered the music space at just the right time. Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker started up Napster to make music distribution easy in this new age. Yet this was a huge issue for Napster. They were sued for copyright infringement by many music studios. After ceasing operations in 2001, Napster filed for bankruptcy in 2002. Just after this, a little company named Apple came up with a legal model to do exactly what Napster was doing. They called it iTunes.