Napster, the legendary music platform, reinvents itself and offers cryptocurrencies and NFT’s

napster, the platform peer to peer that turned the music industry upside down at the turn of the millennium is back, albeit totally transformed. Created in 1999 by the developer Shawn Fanning and for the entrepreneur Sean Parker (who years later would become one of the first investors in Facebook), the program allowed a user to share files that were on their computer’s hard drive with other users in order to play them remotely. That meant that even if you hadn’t paid for a song, you could still enjoy it.

For the music industry, Napster meant the beginning of the end of a model that had prevailed for years, based on the sale of albums in physical format (vinyl, cassettes, and CDs) and that evolved into downloads of single songs that Steve Job and iTunes uploaded capitalize, before the platforms of streaming like Spotify.

After conquering users all over the planet and leaking an unfinished song from Metallicathe platform became the focus of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and various artists such as dr dre and the members of Metallica. Although the German record company, Bertelsmann, tried to ally with Napster and turn it into a service that only had archives of artists who agreed with the model, a federal court judge in the United States ordered its definitive closure in July 2021.

Napster: a history of failed alliances

After its closure, the service went through a series of transformations and alliances to try to continue operating within the legal framework. In November 2002 it was acquired by Roxio, the recording software developer company that turned it into a digital music store under the brand Napster 2.0 which was bought by Best Buy to compete, unsuccessfully, with iTunes and Amazon. In 2011, it merged with the Rhapsody streaming platform and established incipient alliances in some territories with Telefonica and Vodafone.

Now Bloomberg has announced that Napster plans a return to the music scene, but completely transformed. After being acquired by Hivemind Capital Partners, the brand will be launched as $NAPSTERa digital token that can be used by music fans to buy tickets and experiences from artists who join the platform.

In a note published by the company it is explained that: “Now, Napster is going back to its roots and will launch a decentralized music ecosystem for the benefit of fans, music creators and rights holders. These communities will be empowered by the adoption of Web3 tools to unlock meaningful new ways for artists to build sustainable careers on their own terms and for fans to get even closer to the music. The Web3 space offers a unique opportunity to deliver something truly innovative for music creators, their fans and rights holders.”

Napster’s commitment is to take advantage of the digital tools that exist today (blockchain, NFT’s cryptocurrencies) so that music creators can be intimate with their fans and consumers in a new and different way where creative freedom is encouraged.

Npaster’s bet is similar to the one announced by limerwire in March of this year.