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side, too, and sometimes would just start shouting, Citron said. “There were three or four meetings where I stormed out” as both men cursed, Citron said.

After continual redrawing of the business plan and marathon negotiating sessions, Warner Brothers finally agreed to a deal in April 2000. It was one of the happiest days of Citron’s life. Glaser insisted on keeping the deal under wraps, hoping to get at least one or two more labels on board before going public with the news. Citron went back to shuttle diplomacy with a little more spring in his step. By then, though, Napster was getting too big for anyone to ignore. Even Citron’s twelve-year-old son and all of his friends were using the program. As Napster grew, Glaser and Citron figured they couldn’t just offer downloads for sale, but instead needed to turn MusicNet into something that permitted sampling of a wide variety of music. They decided to shift to pitching a subscription-based model like cable TV: $10 a month for the service and premium features on top of that. With work on anticopying tools continuing and Warner still patiently waiting for the business model to get hammered out, Citron made the rounds yet again. Napster had made the labels much more nervous about copying, but Citron argued they should allow at least a limited test. If too much of the test music got into the wild, they could say they had tried. The labels did get more receptive, even calling Citron on occasion before he called them. “They had to show their bosses that they had an answer to Napster,” Citron said.

An emotional high point came when Glaser got Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Universal’s parent company, to attend a summit meeting in New York. The executive’s presence was an encouraging sign, as was the fact that Universal sent label CEO Doug Morris and producer Jimmy Iovine—real content people, not technology specialists. “Rob said, ‘Let’s get this done or go our separate ways.’ The mood was really positive. It helped us focus,” Citron said. It turned out that Morris and Iovine had been in New York anyway because U2 was releasing a new album. In the spirit of the day, they invited Citron and Glaser to tag along backstage as they watched U2 perform on MTV’s Total Request Live program. They met the band, and there was a feeling of real camaraderie. After spending hours together, Iovine invited Citron to return to L.A. with him on the company’s private jet. Citron eagerly accepted and spent the flight