Someone paid $207 million to turn Napster metaverse

Something is happening to Napster.

If you were old enough to recognize yourself as a conscious being in the ’90s, you remember Napster as a free peer-to-peer music-sharing service where users uploaded millions of songs as MP3 files for others to download and enjoy. Of course, this practice was not exactly legal, so as Napster became more popular (especially with college students), topping out at over 80 million users, it caught the attention of bands and record labels. The subsequent copyright infringement lawsuits shut it down in 2001, and it later officially filed for bankruptcy.

But though Napster-as-a-service ended up dead, Napster-as-a-brand wasn’t quite in the ground. Instead, it ended up passed from hand to hand in several business deals, being snapped up by companies who thought they could slap the well-known name on their own services, to their advantage.

The timeline looks like this:

• Software company Roxio buys the rights to Napster’s brand and logos at bankruptcy auction in 2002, and rebrands the music service PressPlay as Napster 2.0 in 2003
• In 2008, Best Buy acquires Napster 2.0 for $121 million
• In 2011, rival music streamer Rhapsody acquires Napster. Financial details weren’t disclosed, but Best Buy got a minor stake in Rhapsody as part of the deal.
• Rhapsody rebrands as Napster in 2016 and continues operating as a music streaming service, growing to around 3 million users
• In 2020, Napster was sold to VR music/concerts platform MelodyVR for $70.6 million
• Just two years later, it was sold to New York City-based digital asset investor Hivemind Capital Partners and Algorand, a Singaporean blockchain company

And now, in its latest hand-pass, Napster has been bought by Infinite Reality

for a whopping $207 million, and looks like it’ll be rejiggered as a metaverse-hopeful destination for musicians and fans.

Infinite Reality was founded in 2019 and recently raised a $3 billion round of funding from a private investor. It describes itself as a “media, ecommerce, and marketing company focused on 3D and AI-powered experiences” that’s currently making “branded 3D virtual spaces where fans can enjoy virtual concerts, social listening parties, and other immersive and community-based experiences.”

Infinite Reality says Napster reborn will also lean into gamification features (it wasn’t specific about what that will entail) and will let artists sell tickets to IRL concerts, physical 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,” John Acunto, Infinite Reality’s CEO, said in a statement.

While Infinity Reality didn’t give too many exact details about what people can expect from Napster Metaverse.0, it did post a video on X that shows a distinctly Horizon Worlds-esque environment with basic decor and avatars that look maybe slightly better than what Zuck’s team came up with (they do have legs!). But not by much.

So what’s the deal? Is this the next evolution of music disruption? Will artists actually want to use this–and actually benefit? Is the metaverse still a thing anyone (outside of Roblox and Fortnite, apparently) is capable of making work?

All that remains to be seen. For now, this whole shebang is giving us the same vibe as that time Tai Lopez bought RadioShack and LimeWire and turned them into NFTs.