Napster Is Back as Rhapsody Rebrands Its Streaming Service | TechTree.com

Napster Is Back as Rhapsody Rebrands Its Streaming Service

Remember Napster? Music streaming service Rhapsody hopes you do, as the company is getting ready to rebrand its U.S. operations under the Napster name.

 

Napster is dead! Long live Napster! 

The brand that popularised online music sharing in the early days of the Internet is back, thanks to better sense prevailing at the company that took it over five years ago. 

Reports suggest that the digital music group Rhapsody, which bought the Napster brand in 2011, has announced that it would be re-branding itself as Napster. Just proves the point that any company that sets a trend stays in public memory. 

Napster was launched in 1999 as a peer-to-peer file-sharing service and became wildly popular as Internet users discovered ways to get music online.But Napster was found to be facilitating music piracy and shut down by US courts in 2001, leading to bankruptcy.

The brand lived on, however, and was acquired by US retailer Best Buy in 2008 for $121 million, before being sold to Rhapsody for an undisclosed price.
A short blog post Tuesday on Rhapsody said little about the change, with a headline, "Rhapsody is becoming Napster." The statement said: "No changes to your playlists, favorites, albums, and artists. Same music. Same service. Same price. 100% the music you love. Stay tuned!"

Napster was created by Sean Parker who went on to be Facebook's first president and has since become a prominent Silicon Valley figure and his friend Shawn Fanning.With an estimated 3.5 million subscribers, Rhapsody has been trailing other online music services such as Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music.


TAGS: Napster, Sean Parker, Rhapsody, Facebook

 
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