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opportunity too big to be missed. “There are so many new ways to slice and dice the content,” he said. Most production costs vanish, “and we can let you know when your favorite artist has a new record.” Samit and Cohen, whom he hired in early 2000, did licensing deals for the play of EMI songs on Internet jukeboxes, in hotel rooms, for a digital-only single by Lenny Kravitz, and for a Pizza Hut promotion that sold eight hundred thousand CDs with songs picked by customers.

It was hard to imagine a more receptive audience for Napster than Samit. And the company had a terrific introduction to him from Ted Cohen. Cohen had started in the music business managing bands and putting on dances at his Cleveland high school. At Ithaca College, he spent so much time booking bands into clubs that he went on academic probation and eventually returned to a local school in Cleveland. There he became music director at the college radio station, which happened to be the only alternative FM station in the area. As a result, real acts like blues guitarist Johnny Winter stopped in. Cohen quit school to be a record buyer for a chain, then moved into the promotion business for Columbia and Warner Brothers. “I kept running away with the band, so they moved me to artist development,” Cohen said. The next stop, in 1982, was Warner’s new-media group, and it was there that Cohen turned tech.

When the Web took off, Cohen rode with it as a consultant, helping Silicon Valley’s Liquid Audio and assisting then-little-known Amazon.com to get into CD sales. He built a portfolio of dozens of companies and groups that he advised, from Microsoft to the RIAA. In May 1999, when Napster had just been incorporated, Cohen saw its website. A box on the site invited prospective advertisers to send e-mail. So Cohen did, introducing himself. John Fanning called, and they chatted. Two months later, Fanning asked if Cohen would come to work at the firm, then still on the East Coast. Cohen demurred, saying he wasn’t interested in working anywhere full-time. In September, Cohen heard from Fanning again. This time, Fanning said that he had hired Eileen Richardson and Bill Bales but wanted Cohen as a consultant. Fanning had Cohen fly to San Mateo, where the conversation with Napster’s new executives led to an offer to be CEO. Cohen declined again but agreed to serve as an adviser.

Two months later, Cohen was chairing the Webnoize digital-music

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