James Delahunty
2 Dec 2011 6:42
Best Buy, Rhapsody complete deal that spells end for Napster.
Music pirates today are arguably spoiled by mega-fast Internet connections, BitTorrent and file locker services; but in 1999, Napster was the King of free music. Teenage readers will only remember Napster as just another legitimate digital music service among, frankly, too many.
When Napster first launched in 1999, it acted as a P2P file sharing service for music, and quickly became a huge source of pirated music files. The recording industry erupted into chaos in response, as people all over the world opened their libraries of MP3 files to each other.
The centralized nature of Napster's network worked against it however, and just a couple of years after it came along, it was forced shut by court order. Following its death, dozens of new services popped up to replace it, learning from Napster's mistakes and riding on a massive explosive of new broadband connections around the world.
Since then, Napster has reformed and come back as a legal service. In 2008, retailer Best Buy put up $121 million to acquire Napster.
Last month it was revealed that Best Buy and Rhapsody had reached a deal that would see Napster subscribers and other assets transferred to Rhapsody. That deal has now been closed and Napster.com simply sends users to Rhapsody now, suggesting that it's curtains for the brand name that caused so much chaos.