Napster
Changed music forever. Lasted two years.
CAUSE OF DEATH: Sued by the record industry, Metallica and Dr. Dre. Shut down by injunction in July 2001.
Napster launched in June 1999. Soon MP3 transfers were eating as much as 61% of the outside traffic on college dorm networks. At its verified peak it had 26.4 million users. Metallica identified 335,000 people it said were sharing its songs and delivered close to 60,000 pages, a rare case of a band printing out its own fans and handing them to a lawyer. In February 2001 Napster offered the labels $1 billion over five years. They did not take it. The network shut down that July. A buyer offered $85 million for the remains, and a judge blocked the sale. The name and what was left went for $5.3 million. The industry won the case and lost the century.