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money from his band’s signing, leaving 15 percent to divide among the musicians, their lawyer, their manager, and their producer, who had been appointed by the label. Then it got worse. “The label put us on the road and halfway through the tour a new president took over. Without notice, they pulled all tour support and label advertising for new bands. . . . We went broke trying to get home,” Lawrence wrote. “Napster has the potential to put the power of art and business back in the hands of an artist.”

The furthest Napster went to ally itself with musicians was sponsoring a free Back to Basics tour in July 2000 headlined by Limp Bizkit. The tour cost a whopping $1.8 million but helped spread goodwill, and Shawn got to meet band frontman Fred Durst after the San Jose show. But Napster also embarrassed itself by using a heavy hand against another supportive band, a punk group called the Offspring. The band was one of many that decided it had no problem with Napster distributing its music. “The Offspring view MP3 technology and programs such as Napster as being a vital and necessary means to promote us and foster better relationships with our fans,” the band wrote on its site. But it grew annoyed that Napster had never asked permission. Cheekily, it decided to take its support a step further, copying the Napster logo, plastering it on shirts and caps, and selling the gear through its website. The Offspring figured that since Napster was playing fast and loose with copyright law, it wouldn’t be in much of a position to complain. The group might not have realized, however, that if Napster knew about someone else using its logo and failed to get a signed agreement, it could have lost all rights to defend the trademark elsewhere. Product manager Brandon Barber urged the press team to tread lightly, perhaps putting out a humorous declaration of shock and outrage. But the lawyers were by now in charge, and Napster fired off a cease-and-desist letter to the band, demanding that it stop selling the products. Napster was duly mocked for the hypocrisy of the move. After several days, the company and the Offspring struck a deal giving the band formal permission to sell things, with all profits going to a charity agreed on by Offspring singer Dexter Holland and Shawn. They chose the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The Offspring didn’t know that it had stumbled onto another of the odd business blunders at Napster, a mess that had its roots in the company’s unprofessional beginnings and that would fester on through 2000.