Community of Napster Users Now Exceeds 20 Million

Music Lovers of all Ages and Diverse Interests Drive Record Adoption Rate

SAN MATEO, Calif., July 19 - Driven by America's passion for music and cutting edge technology, Napster, Inc., the world's largest file sharing community, announced today that its community of users now exceeds 20 million people, as defined by the number of unique user accounts. Experiencing record growth since its inception just over a year ago, Napster's membership has doubled since the end of April 2000, and is expanding faster than such previous high-growth Internet application companies as Hotmail or ICQ.

Napster's file-sharing software first started circulating on the Internet over a year ago. On November 19, 1999, the company recorded the millionth user to download its software, by the end of February the number of people who had downloaded the application reached five million, growing to ten million in April, and 15 million by the second week of June. Napster recorded the 20 millionth download of its client software application early in the morning on July 13th at the company headquarters in San Mateo.

"In just over a year Napster has attracted a community of more than 20 million music fans who are sampling music, discovering new artists, buying CDs and sharing their passion for their favorite artists in our chat rooms," said Hank Barry, CEO. "What is now the fastest ramp-up of a user base in Internet history is a great tribute to the Napster community and its inventor, Shawn Fanning."

The Napster service is accessed by over four million individual users each day, as defined by unique IP addresses. The company consistently has up to 500,000 concurrently active users at any given time on any given day, compared to AOL, which claims approximately 1.5 million simultaneous users at any given time. It is this kind of interest in file-sharing that has inspired such industry experts as Andy Grove, the founder of Intel, to state: "The whole Internet could be re-architected by Napster-like technology."

"This astonishing growth has taken place without advertising or promotion," Milton Olin, Napster's Chief Operating Officer, said. "The powerful combination of great technology and the appeal of sharing files with other music lovers has attracted an amazing community of people. Our users are of all ages: many of them are over 30, and half are women. The wide range of musical styles being shared, from the most popular to the most obscure, demonstrates the diversity of the Napster community. It's no wonder that CD sales are rising -- Americans love music. Napster helps cultivate, broaden and deepen our users' affection for music."

"The response to Napster so far has been beyond my wildest dreams," remarked Shawn Fanning, the 19-year-old creator of the software application. "I think its popularity lies in the fact that it is so convenient and easy to use. It's also amazing to see just how much music means to Americans, and how eager they are to interact with other music fans when given the opportunity."

About Napster
Napster is the world's leading file-sharing community. Napster's software application enables users to locate and share media files from one convenient, easy-to-use interface. It also provides media fans a vehicle to identify new artists and a forum to communicate their interests and tastes with one another via instant messaging, chat rooms, and Hot List user bookmarks.