Napster to become a music-marketing metaverse firm after being sold for $207M – Ars Technica

After that, the Napster brand changed hands multiple times, including with Roxio, which made Napster an iTunes rival in 2003. The early 2000s saw Napster try various business ventures, including a Flash-based site that let you stream for free but without playlists and a subscription model. Best Buy owned Napster for a bit in 2008 but eventually sold it to Rhapsody, which relaunched the Napster brand as a streaming service in 2016. UK-based MelodyVR paid $70 million for the brand founded by Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning in 2020 before selling it in 2022 to the blockchain firms.