Former music-pirating platform Napster to be reborn rather ironically as a metaverse for musicians to connect with their fans after $207 million deal

If you thought the Napster peer-to-peer music sharing platform was long since toast, a new $207 million deal says otherwise. Turns out the brand has been bought and will be reborn as a metaverse-based platform with which musicians will connect their melodic wares to fans. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is something of a turn around for a brand that arguably introduced the idea of mass music piracy to the mainstream.

Perhaps just as surprising is the revelation, of sorts, that Napster has been ticking along as a legit music streaming platform since 2016. More on that in a moment.

The main news is that Napster has been acquired by Infinite Reality, the latter described as a “media, ecommerce, and marketing company focused on 3D and AI-powered experiences.”

In practice, that will apparently mean, “branded 3D virtual spaces where fans can enjoy virtual concerts, social listening parties, and other immersive and community-based experiences.” Napster will also lean into “gamification” features, though the specifics there aren’t clear. The platform will also allow artists to sell tickets, merch and “exclusive digital content.”

“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,” Infinite Reality’s CEO John Acunto says.

As for the metaverse or VR dimension of the new Napster, the video posted on Infinite Reality’s X feed implies a pretty low-fi experience that looks like something out of a 10-year-old installment of The Sims.

All of this sits slightly uncomfortably with a brand that’s synonymous with the early days of unauthorised music sharing. Then again, Acunto claims with a certain logic that, “there’s no better name than Napster to disrupt.”

Whatever, Napster first appeared in 1999 and was an almost instant smash hit, peaking at 80 million users, a very large figure for the early internet. It almost equally rapidly imploded, falling foul to legal challenges in 2001 before formally filing for bankruptcy in 2002. The brand has since been punted about, with ownership changing frequently over the years.

Napster, of course, wasn’t the first online platform used to share music, much and perhaps the vast majority of which was done without the permission rights holders. But it made searching for and sharing music sharing easier than ever before. And totally free, of course.

Anyway, the Napster brand was acquired by music streaming platform Rhapsody from, of all places, electronics retailer Best Buy in 2011. Rhapsody then rebranded its platform to Napster in 2016. There have been further deals since, with the latest $207 million transaction demonstrating just how much equity some in the business community presumably believe remains in the Napster brand despite its close association with content piracy.

It’s all an intriguing testament to the perceived power of brands, but whether that history will be a draw for musicians and other artists remains to be seen. Likewise, whether what the world’s music fans are crying out for is a metaverse-based VR platform to enhance an inherently auditory medium is another unknown. Given that Meta has reportedly buried $50 billion into VR and the metaverse to little financial avail, it’s a bold bet, to be sure. I guess we’ll find out soon enough!