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.
Infinite Reality, for its part, described itself in a press release as “an innovation company powering the next generation of digital media and ecommerce through extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI), and other immersive technologies.”
Infinite Reality isn’t the first company in the past several years hoping to take on the infamous Napster name and try to morph the brand to shake up the music business, and so far, none have panned out. Still, the company’s broader goal to more directly monetize fandom does reflect an increasing line of thought in the music industry, as more stakeholders are focusing offerings for “superfans” who’ve shown outsized demand for content from their favorite artists.
Infinite Reality hopes to make a splash, citing offerings such as physical and digital merch sales, AI-powered customer service, and metaverse-like virtual spaces for fans to congregate for concerts or listening parties. Infinite Reality also owns a Drone Racing League and esports teams that compete in League of Legends and Call of Duty; the company said it’d be using those platforms to push the music too.
“I firmly believe that the artist-fan relationship is evolving, with fans craving hyper-personalized, intimate access to their favorite artists, while artists are searching for innovative ways to deepen connections with fans, and access new streams of revenue,” John Acunto, Co-Founder and CEO of Infinite Reality, said in a statement. “We’re creating the ultimate music platform where artists can thrive in the next wave of digital disruption.”
Per the release, to date the Napster streaming service has paid out more than $1 billion in royalties to artists and songwriters. Jon Vlassopulos, who joined Napster as CEO in 2022, will continue to serve in his chief executive role. Prior to joining Napster, Vlassopulos was the head of music for the popular video game Roblox, where he helped launch virtual concerts for artists including Lil Nas X and Twenty One Pilots.
“Napster revolutionized digital music in the nineties, and now, with Infinite Reality, we’re ready to do it again,” Vassopulos said in a statement. “Imagine stepping into a virtual venue to watch an exclusive show with friends, chat with your favorite artist in their own virtual hangout as they drop their new single, and be able to directly buy their exclusive digital and physical merch. With Infinite Reality’s expertise in immersive 3D technology, we will transform Napster into a next-generation platform where fans don’t just listen on their own—they experience music in entirely new ways.”