Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning and documentarian Alex Winter will be at TechCrunch Disrupt NY next week, joining our truly badass lineup to talk about their upcoming Napster documentary DOWNLOADED.
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Napster’s emergence was the first time the masses were faced with the power of peer-to-peer file sharing and the Internet. There wasn’t a college campus that didn’t Napster its way through party soundtracks in the early aughts. And the fact that a woman is still involved in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit for downloading just 26 songs is testament to the fact that we still don’t understand how to harness that power.
Not only will we host a special pre-release screening of the film at Manhattan Center after the conference on Tuesday, April 30th, but we’ll be spending some time that afternoon chatting up Fanning and Winter. They will obviously talk about DOWNLOADED, why Napster failed and the state of the music industry in the digital era.
And we suspect Fanning will keep you posted on the state of his latest startup, Airtime, which was in pivot mode the last time we checked.
Fun fact: The name Napster came from a childhood nickname for Fanning’s curly (nappy) hair. The more you know.
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Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
DOWNLOADED trailer below.
Shawn Fanning
CEO & Co-Founder, Airtime
Shawn Fanning created Napster in 1998 while attending Northeastern University.
He is currently the GM of Rupture at Electronic Arts.
Fanning has since founded SNOCAP, a B2B Music Distributor, in 2002, and Rupture, an MMORPG social network in 2006. Both companies were sold in 2008 – SNOCAP to imeem, and Rupture to Electronic Arts.
Alex began his career as a child actor, with starring roles on Broadway and in feature films, including the immensely popular BILL AND TED franchise and Warner Bros. THE LOST BOYS.
After attending NYU film School, Alex co-wrote, co-directed and starred in the hit MTV comedy series THE IDIOT BOX, following by his feature debut FREAKED, released by Twentieth Century Fox. Subsequent feature films include FEVER, a psychological thriller that Alex wrote and directed. Praised by AO Scott in the New York Times as ‘Pure Hitchcockian panic,’ FEVER was an Official Selection at Cannes and other festivals worldwide. For TV, Alex produced and directed two record-breaking, live-action BEN 10 movies for Cartoon Network, garnering an Emmy nomination for best Visual Effects. Currently, Alex is producing and directing DOWNLOADED, a feature documentary about the Digital revolution, for VH1 Rock Docs. Interview subjects include Napster co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, as well as numerous musicians and industry executives. DOWNLOADED is due for theatrical and TV release in 2013.
Alongside his feature projects, Alex maintains a busy career as a director, screenwriter and actor.
