The original Napster went out of business in 2001 but, despite its short, fiery life and premature, litigation-fueled death, it has soldiered on throughout the years, thanks largely to newer tech companies that are eager to capitalize on the legendary music platform’s brand.
Case in point: This month, Napster was sold for $207 million to a Metaverse company, Infinite Reality. On its website, Infinite Reality says it sells AI and XR services to companies and governments, including something called iR Studio, which offers users the ability to create “a 3D website with no coding skills.”
What does Infinite plan to do with Napster? The company says it will “expand and reimagine Napster, empowering artists with new audience monetization and engagement capabilities, underpinned by iR’s immersive technology, AI-powered tools, and audience network.”
What does that actually mean? The firm’s press release states that it plans to “transform Napster beyond streaming into a social and interactive music platform, leveraging its immersive technology and audience network of digitally native fans.” That apparently means that the company is going to allow fans to attend concerts digitally via “virtual 3D spaces,” and will also give artists the opportunity to sell digital and physical merchandise to fans, according to the Associated Press.
Napster rose to prominence as one of the first peer-to-peer file sharing platforms during the early days of the Internet. Co-founded in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker (who would go on to become an early investor in, and then first president of, Facebook), the platform allowed users to share MP3 files of their favorite music. Unfortunately, Napster’s freewheeling ways inevitably led to substantial music piracy and, as a result, lawsuits, which ultimately led it to shut down in 2001.
Napster was previously purchased in 2022 by two web3 companies, Hivemind and Algorand, which set the platform on a humiliating path towards crypto integration. As such, the music-sharing platform joins a harem of prominent brands that have been resurrected for the purposes of web3 promotion. Other unlucky members of that group include the likes of RadioShack (which was purchased by a crypto company in 2022), GameStop (which famously led to the WallStreetBets fiasco) and Limewire.
