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Napster is a relic of a relatively ancient internet era where the file-sharing platform managed to generate plenty of controversy. The brand eventually became a shell of its former self, but that hasn’t stopped one company from deciding to fork over more than $200 million to buy it.
In 1999, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker unleashed Napster on an unsuspecting world and turned the music industry on its head courtesy of the peer-to-peer file-sharing platform that made it easier than ever to track down and download MP3s without having to fork over a single penny for the songs and albums that served as its primary form of currency.
Napster was a game-changer that experienced a meteoric rise and fall courtesy of the many people who harnessed it to download music while enraging the bands and labels who revolted against the platform with the help of the lawsuits that led to the company filing for bankruptcy just two years after it came into existence.
However, Pandora’s box had already been opened (LimeWire, which launched in 2000, remained operational for close to a decade before running into its own legal issues), and Napster was essentially responsible for the digital music revolution that led to iTunes blowing up before the likes of Spotify and Apple Music eventually ushered in a new era.
The Napster brand has changed hands a number of times since it shut down close to 25 years ago. The most notable transaction saw Best Buy purchase its remaining assets for $121 million in 2008 prior to merging it with Rhapsody, and in 2020, it was once again offloaded to a virtual reality company that dropped $70 million.
Napster may have played an indelible role in the formation of the current music landscape, but it’s also become the ultimate afterthought in a world where its market share is virtually negligible.
However, that didn’t prevent Infinite Reality—a metaverse-adjacent tech company that positions itself as the “future of immersion”—from dropping a very hefty sum to become Napster’s newest owner after (it was most recently sold in 2022 to a consortium of blockchain-focused investors).
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Infinite Reality has dropped a whopping $207 million for that privilege while teasing the acquisition as the first step to create a “social-first music platform where fans can more directly engage with music and artists” with initiatives linked to “physical and digital merch sales, AI-powered customer service, and metaverse-like virtual spaces for fans to congregate for concerts or listening parties.”
You almost have to be impressed by the sheer number of tech buzzwords used to describe the vision, and while I’m very skeptical we’re about to live in a world where Napster surges back into the mainstream after undergoing a dramatic rebirth, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Content shared from brobible.com.