The music-streaming service Napster has sold for $207 million to the tech firm Infinite Reality.
Napster, the former music pirating site and bane of major labels at the turn of the millennium, is today a minor player compared to Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music. Yet Infinite Reality said it hopes to rebuild Napster into “a social music platform that prioritizes active fan engagement over passive listening.”
Infinite Reality, which formed in 2019 with backing from a number of music and sports celebrities including Steve Aoki and Imagine Dragons, bought the platform from the blockchain and cryptocurrency company Algorand and Hivemind Capital Partners. Many companies have tried in vain to rebuild Napster for modern music tech, including retail outlet Best Buy and streamer Rhapsody.
Napster CEO Jon Vlassopulos, a former head of music at Roblox who invested in the first iteration of Napster at Bertelsmann, will continue to lead the brand as it integrates with the company’s hopes for livestreaming, e-commerce, digital community management and AI initiatives. “The internet has evolved from desktop to mobile, from mobile to social, and now we are entering the immersive era,” Vlassopulos said in a statement. “Yet music streaming has remained largely the same.”
Napster has long been an inspiration for tech firms looking to smash entrenched media industries like its co-founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker did.
Joseph Menn, the author of “All The Rave,” a history of Napster, told The Times last year that “Napster created this whole wave of antihero entrepreneurs,” who saw music as a way in for more valuable marketing opportunities. “Napster knew more about the customer than the labels did. “They had access to your music collection, they saw what people downloaded. They could say ‘Bobby likes Led Zeppelin, and he’s curious about AC/DC, here is his email address, and you can tell him when AC/DC has a new album out.’ That was the big value proposition.”
Yet the sale and revamp arrives at a complex time for tech and streaming services, as many young consumers are pulling back from pricey streaming subscriptions amidt inflation and recession fears, turning to ad-supported free services or amateur digital content creators.
