By Ethan Millman, Hollywood Reporter | 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.
To be clear, the current iteration of Napster is far removed from the brand’s infamous origin as a peer-to-peer file exchange. The original Napster went under in the early 2000s, and the streaming service Rhapsody bought the brand in 2011, resurrecting the name as it rebranded as Napster in 2016. Napster isn’t the only controversial music service of its era that’s resurfaced for other music uses; Limewire also made a comeback in recent years, currently offering an AI music generation platform along with an AI image generator.
Since the Rhapsody rebrand, the Napster had become a sort of acquisition magnet to companies pursuing tech trends that had been en vogue in the past several years. MelodyVR, a virtual reality company, purchased Napster in 2020 during the pandemic for $70 million, hoping to turn the platform into a hybrid music and live-streaming platform. By 2022, the cryptocurrency companies Hivemind and Algorand bought Napster, focusing on a web3 and blockchain play.
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Read the full story here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/napster-finds-new-owners-in-200m-acquisition/
Photo: Napster rep (far right) at CDJ Show & Conference
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