Napster, the brand that ushered in an era of rampant music piracy before later being reborn as a subscription music streaming platform, has been sold for $207 million.
Tech company Infinite Reality announced Tuesday morning that it bought Napster in the nine-figure deal, hoping to further transform Napster from merely a streaming service into a more social-first music platform where fans can more directly engage with music and artists.
Good luck.
Ernie Smith, writing for Motherboard:
In the roughly 24 months between the time Napster shut down its popular free service and Steve Jobs announced the iTunes Music Store to the public, the music industry tried to create legal replacements, but the lack of precedent was a problem. Nobody could figure out exactly what a legal digital music industry was supposed to look like, or how it was supposed to work.
Rhapsody is rebranding itself as Napster.
Rhapsody is part of the old guard of music streaming services, launched way back in 2001 as Listen.com. It never got the traction of it’s rival Spotify, and is now competing against titans like Apple and Google as well. So now, in a bizarre move, Rhapsody is relaunching as Napster, the service it acquired in 2011 which is also synonymous with rampant file sharing and music piracy. “No changes to your playlists, favorites, albums, and artists,” says a blog post on Rhapsody’s website. “Same music. Same service. Same price. 100% the music you love. Stay tuned!”
A pure marketing move. Meh. I’ve gotta think we’re close to when most music listeners won’t even remember using Napster. Can you remember the first song you downloaded on the program? I am pretty sure mine was Eve 6’s “Inside Out.”