Napster pioneered music sharing over 25 years ago. It just got bought for $207 million
Napster is getting acquired by Infinite Reality for $207 million, the latest chapter for a company whose brand is synonymous with early music sharing.
A quarter century ago, Napster was notorious on the internet for allowing people to swap songs for free, long before the music industry had come up with a model for the digital age.
The service was shuttered in 2001 amid mounting legal battles, and filed for bankruptcy the following year. But the brand isn't dead.
Napster is the latest iconic technology brand from decades past to get a new life, following acquisitions and revivals in recent years of Kodak, Nokia and luxury audio brand McIntosh.
"I think there's no better name than Napster to disrupt," Acunto said.
Napster was launched in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, and became the first significant peer-to-peer file-sharing application. It allowed PC users to swap MP3 files, which could be played in a media player like Winamp, and build collections of digital popular music for free.