But I just really think there is a natural extension into other types of media because it’s an excellent system for reliably locating and retrieving content.

If you’re a musician or actor, you know that if you’re successful, some level of fame goes along with that. You’re prepared. But how often does that happen to a programmer?

It was very early, and we were still like beta or alpha stage, and so we started receiving a ton of download. The server became overloaded, and that’s when I realized that this had a huge market.

I think it’s pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific, but I could see a system like Napster evolving into something that allows users to locate and retrieve different types of data other than just MP3s or audio files.

If you think about computer programming, it’s as antisocial as it gets.

That’s why I ended up leaving school – because it required so much time, and it was such an excellent idea. I figured I would regret not going full force with this idea. It seemed we could make something of it.

Independent artists and labels have always been the trendsetters in music and the music business.

I think in terms of the work were doing now a lot of the UI cleanup... I see it getting much prettier.

grateful that we do not have to turn away our 20 million users.

I understood an idea like this could become popular, but at the same time I didn't think it was my implementation that would be so widely used.