New York Times Napster Documentary Illustrates How Company Changed Music Industry Forever [WATCH]

The music industry suffered a shock it was never able to recover from when Napster opened the flood gates of peer to peer file sharing that allowed users to download music from each other's hard drives without have to pay for it. The service was eventually shut down in 2001 after three years of explosive growth up to over 70 million users, the impact it had on the music business and the psyche of the modern digital age consumer has been incalculable. A New York Times' short documentary catalogs the rise and fall of Napster, from its inception in a Northeastern dorm room, to its final shuttering at the hands of record labels and US courts and the lasting impact a small start up had on consumers and music.

The scene is set when labels were making billions off of CD sales and the big five controlled distribution. No one had harnessed the power of digital distribution just yet because physical CDs were so profitable. In came Napster at the tail end of the dotcom boom in 1999 to totally turn that model on its head, by creating a digital distribution platform that made music easily available at the click for free.

Vivien Lewitt, director ofmusic content partnerships at YouTube, remarked on her first impressions of the software. The first being that it was "revolutionary and things would never be the same again in the music industry" and the second being it "would destroy the recording industry."

The most remarkable part of Napster is the legacy is left behind even after it was forced to close down in 2001. Other sites like Limewire (now shuttered) rose up to take its place and more importantly, music consumers, notably young consumers expected to be able to get their music for free and online. It marked the beginning of the end of CD sales and the rise of digital sales and revolution of digital, which has moved to streaming.

The final piece of the film juxtaposes music stores with the downfall of bookstores like Borders and movie stores like Blockbuster, making the point that music was the first to face this massive turmoil.

Watch it all below: