A well-known brand that was once synonymous with music piracy has been acquired by Infinite Reality for $207 million, with its current iteration as a subscription music service.
The acquisition, announced on Tuesday by the tech startup, aims to transform Napster into a social music platform where artists can engage with fans and find enhanced opportunities to monetize their work.
Jon Vlassopulos, CEO of Napster, stated in a blog post that the internet has transitioned from desktop to mobile, then to social, and is now entering an immersive era, yet music streaming has remained largely unchanged. He emphasized the need to rethink the possibilities within music streaming.
Infinite Reality plans to revamp Napster by creating virtual 3D spaces enabling fans to attend concerts and allowing musicians or labels to sell both digital and physical merchandise. Additionally, artists will have access to expanded metrics and analytics to gain deeper insights into user behavior on the platform.
Amish Shah, Chief Business Officer of Infinite Reality, expressed that their technology is ideally suited to empower music artists, who continually push creative boundaries.
Napster was originally launched in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, quickly becoming the first major peer-to-peer file-sharing application. The platform closed in the early 2000s after legal actions from the record industry and the rock band Metallica over copyright violations. The brand was subsequently acquired by Rhapsody in 2011 and relaunched as a music streaming service. This story was initially published on Fortune.com.
