File sharing removed both cost and genre barriers to music access

Evidence

Napster didn’t just make music free—it made it limitless. Fans no longer had to gamble on an expensive album or stay within the confines of a favorite genre. Instead, they could download tracks from any artist, style, or era, from Brazilian bossa nova to death metal. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 127

Categorization

• XREF: Napster is the ‘internet-collapsed distribution’ mechanism in Marx’s thesis — the technological precondition for universal availability that flattens subcultural difference.