Do you remember Napster? It was everybody’s favorite place to get pirated music and other stuff in the late 90s. Then they got sued a lot. Metallica gave a talk to Congress about it. It pretty much disappeared.
Or so I thought, until today. It’s still a big deal, at least to the tech company called Infinite Reality. They just bought Napster for $207 million.
That intrigued enough to go to their website. They still have music, but it’s a subscription service now. It’s looks mediocre compared to others. However, they do have a loyalty plan that earns points for stuff. I’m not getting that on Pandora.
By the way, I told a much younger co-worker that I listen to Pandora and he called me “old”. I reminded him that I pay for my own music, not my parents.
Anyway, Napster was sold to Rhapsody in 2011 and then to Melody VR in 2020 for $70 million In 2022 it sold again to a cryptocurrency company.
The new owners say they’re looking to use it to sell digital and physical merchandise and create virtual spaces for fans to hang out together. Part of that will be 3 dimensional immersion stuff.
It’s come a long way since the days we braved getting all sorts of computer viruses just to spending 15 minutes to download a copy of NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye”.