Napster, a once-popular website people used in the late ‘90s to illegally share music online that went bankrupt in 2001, has been sold for $207 million to a 3D technology company with plans to bring the brand into the metaverse.
Remember Napster? It was a free peer-to-peer file sharing service that launched in 1999 and let people share music with others without paying for it. Record companies got mad and sued it into oblivion and it shut down in 2001. But the brand name didn’t die, and has lingered around for the last 20 years connected to various companies and legal digital music products. And now in 2025, a company has spent over $200 million on Napster with the goal of using it in the totally-not-dead tech-bro-fantasy-land that is the metaverse.
On March 25, as reported by CNBC, 3D technology company Infinite Reality purchased Napster for $207 million. According to the CEO of Infinite Reality, there is “no better name than Napster to disrupt.” “Disrupt what?” you might ask. Well, how about how people consume music in the metaverse?
“When we think about clients who have audiences — influencers, creators — I think it’s very important that they have a connected space that’s around music and musical communities,” said CEO John Acunto. “We just don’t see anybody in the streaming space creating spaces for music.”
The plan is to let musicians and fans create and explore 3D spaces in Napster, which in theory will be a metaverse-like game or program. According to Acunto these spaces will be “crazy environments” that are really “only limited by their imaginations.” The CEO gave the example of a reggae artist creating a beach hangout to listen to his music. Wild. Crazy! How did he come up with such an amazing and innovative idea?!?
Before Infinite Reality stepped in and bought Napster, the brand had been owned by many different companies, including Rhapsody and Best Buy. Napster’s last owner was an NFT company that wanted to do something with music on the blockchain, but that plan fizzled out. Speaking of plans that will fizzle out…seems like a bad time to invest so much money in the metaverse as that tech bro fad has long since been abandoned by most companies in the pursuit of AI garbage.
I wonder if Napster will be sold in a few years to some floundering AI company that’s desperate to launder its bad ideas via a somewhat established brand that people might recognize as they scroll through their algorithmically controlled feeds looking for that next serotonin hit.
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