![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/john-acunto.jpg?w=2048\")
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Bill Ready is right. The Napster phase of AI needs to end. I should know. I run Napster.<\/p>\n
In his Fortune<\/em> op-ed, Ready used our name as shorthand for an era when technology outpaced ethics\u2014when access was prioritized over compensation, and creators got left behind. He\u2019s not wrong about the parallel. Generative AI companies have been scraping the internet\u2019s creative output to train models without much thought about who made that content or whether they\u2019d like to be paid for it. That\u2019s a familiar story to us.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s what Ready doesn\u2019t seem to know: Napster isn\u2019t a cautionary tale anymore. We\u2019re an AI company. And we\u2019ve spent a quarter-century learning exactly the lesson he\u2019s describing.<\/p>\n In 1999, Napster didn\u2019t fail because the idea was wrong. It failed because the business model didn\u2019t exist yet.<\/p>\n The insight was correct: People wanted instant, universal access to music. They wanted to discover new artists without buying a full album. They wanted their library in their pocket. Every single one of those desires turned out to be true\u2014Spotify, Apple Music, and the entire streaming economy proved it.<\/p>\n The failure was that Napster moved faster than anyone could figure out how to compensate the people who made the music. That\u2019s the part that took another decade to solve.<\/p>\n AI is in that same window right now. The technology works. The demand is real. But the compensation models are still catching up. Ready is correct to call that out.<\/p>\n In 1999, we democratized access to music. In 2026, we\u2019re democratizing access to expertise.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s the mission that guides every product decision we make.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s Napster builds AI agents that let real humans with real knowledge share what they know with everyone, at unprecedented scale. We call those agents Companions. They\u2019re not generic chatbots pulling from the entire internet. They\u2019re built on verified, specific expertise that users can collaborate with. And the people who create them own them and get paid when they\u2019re used.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the difference between the Napster phase and what comes after. Not whether<\/em> knowledge gets shared widely, but whether the people who created it benefit<\/em>. Our belief is that consumers come first, both in terms of why we build AI technology and what they create with it.<\/p>\n I want to agree with Ready on something else, too. He argues that the AI conversation has been too focused on who\u2019s building the biggest proprietary models, and not enough on open source and democratized access. That\u2019s spot-on. Pinterest reportedly achieved performance comparable to proprietary models at 90% less cost by using open-source tools. That\u2019s the future: democratized AI systems allowing a wide swath of industries and people to perform better, freeing up time for creativity and growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next generation of transformative companies won\u2019t be built by whoever has the most GPUs. They\u2019ll be built by entrepreneurs and educators and small businesses who have domain expertise and finally have tools powerful enough to do something with it \u2013 and monetize it.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to enable. AI is a fantastic collaborator and catalyst for creativity, but ideas are the domain of humankind. We need to preserve the human origins of innovation rather than trying to commoditize it through the use of AI.<\/p>\n Ready invokes our name as a warning. I\u2019d rather it be understood as a lesson that we\u2019ve already internalized.\u00a0<\/p>\n The music industry eventually found its model. Artists get royalties. Streaming services pay licensing fees. It\u2019s not perfect, but it\u2019s a functioning economy where creators participate in the value they generate. That evolution happened because Napster forced the conversation more than 25 years ago. The same thing needs to happen in AI. And we\u2019re not waiting around for someone else to figure it out.<\/p>\n So yes, Bill: The Napster phase of AI needs to end. We agree. We\u2019re working on it. And unlike last time, we\u2019re building the part where creators get paid from the start.<\/p>\n Everyone else needs to find a way to build that, too.<\/p>\n The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of\u00a0<\/em>Fortune.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Napster #CEO #agree #Pinterest #Napster #phase<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bill Ready is right. The Napst… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[5676,529,1055,9582,1294,9581],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What the Original Napster Actually Revealed<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What Napster Is Building Now<\/strong><\/h2>\n
How the Napster Phase Ends<\/strong><\/h2>\n