Bill Ready is right. The Napster phase of AI must end. I should know. I run Napster.
In his Fortune opinion articleReady used our name as shorthand for a time when technology outpaced ethics, access was prioritized over compensation, and creators were left behind. He is not wrong about the parallel. Generative AI companies have taken creative output from the Internet to train models without much thought as to who created this content or whether they would like to be paid for it. It’s a familiar story to us.
But here’s what Ready doesn’t seem to know: Napster is no longer a cautionary tale. We are an AI company. And we have spent a quarter of a century learning exactly the lesson he describes.
What the Original Napster Really Revealed
In 1999, Napster didn’t fail because the idea was wrong. It failed because the business model did not yet exist.
The idea was correct: people wanted instant, universal access to music. They wanted to discover new artists without buying a full album. They wanted to have their library in their pocket. Each of these desires came true…Spotify, Apple Music and the entire streaming economy have proven this.
The failure was that Napster evolved faster than anyone could figure out how to pay the people who made the music. This is the part that took another decade to resolve.
AI is in this same window right now. The technology works. The demand is real. But compensation models are still catching up. Ready is right to say that.
What Napster is building now
In 1999, we democratized access to music. In 2026, we are democratizing access to expertise.
This is the mission that guides every product decision we make.
Today’s Napster creates AI agents that enable real humans with real knowledge to share what they know with everyone, on an unprecedented scale. We call these agents Companions. These are not generic chatbots from across the internet. They rely on verified and specific expertise with which users can collaborate. And the people who create them own them and get paid when they are used.
This is the difference between the Napster phase and what follows. Not if knowledge is widely shared, but if the people who created it profit from it. We believe consumers come first, both in why we develop AI technology and what they create with it.
I also want to agree with Ready on something else. He says the AI debate has focused too much on those building the biggest proprietary models, and not enough on open source and democratized access. It’s perfect. Pinterest reportedly achieved performance comparable to proprietary models at 90% lower cost using open source tools. This is the future: democratized AI systems that enable a wide range of industries and people to function better, freeing up time for creativity and growth.
The next generation of transformative companies won’t be built by whoever has the most GPUs. They will be built by entrepreneurs, educators, and small businesses who have expertise in the field and finally have tools powerful enough to do something with it – and monetize it.
That’s what we’re trying to enable. AI is a fantastic collaborator and catalyst for creativity, but ideas are the domain of humanity. We need to preserve the human origins of innovation rather than trying to commodify it through the use of AI.
How the Napster phase ends
Ready invokes our name as a warning. I prefer this to be understood as a lesson that we have already internalized.
The music industry has finally found its model. Artists receive royalties. Streaming services pay licensing fees. It’s not perfect, but it’s a functioning economy in which creators participate in the value they generate. This evolution happened because Napster forced the conversation over 25 years ago. The same thing needs to happen in the field of AI. And we’re not waiting for anyone else to figure it out.
So yes, Bill: The Napster phase of AI must end. We agree. We are working on it. And unlike last time, we’re building the part where creators get paid from the start.
Everyone needs to find a way to build this, too.
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