Skype founder: Kazaa, Napster help music

Kazaa, Napster Inc. and other creators of file-sharing applications have been good for the music industry, Niklas Zennstrom, founder of the now-defunct Kazaa and CEO of Skype, said Monday.

"Kazaa came five years too early, but without that and Napster we would never have seen the transformation we're seeing in the music industry," said Zennstrom at a gathering of technology experts at the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition held this week in Barcelona. "Record companies are seeing that the Internet is good for their business, and we made that possible."

Zennstrom has led a similar market transformation with his communications company, Skype, which handles about 7 percent of the world's international calls and is signing on new users at a rate of 58 percent per quarter. The company, founded in 2003, was bought last year by eBay Inc. for US$2.6 billion (euro2.06 billion).