| Acquired by | Best Buy |
| Price | $121M |
| Date | 9/08 |
| Terms | Cash |
| Website | napster.com |
| Blog | blog.napster.com |
| @napster | |
| Category | Consumer Web |
| Employees | |
| Description | Music subscription/MP3 download service |
[Napster] (www.napster.com) creates ways to discover, share, acquire and enjoy music anytime, anywhere – from the PC, mobile or TV. The company’s flagship service, Napster, offers unlimited on-demand music streaming as well as downloadable songs for one’s permanent collection playable on any MP3 compatible device, including iPod®, iPhone® and all music-enabled mobile phones. The service is available at www.napster.com and m.napster.com in the U.S. It is also available on the PC in Canada, the U.K., Germany and Japan. A wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY), Napster is headquartered in Los Angeles.
BestBuy acquired Napster for $121 million in September 2008.
Napster was first launched in June 1999, built by Shawn Fanning while he was a student at Northeastern University in Boston. The original service was a free peer-to-peer file sharing network, allowing users to download mp3 files from the network of other users without going through a centralized storage server.
The RIAA served Napster with a lawsuit for copyright infringement in December 1999 for $20B. Napster lost the suit in the Ninth Circuit Court, and settled in 2001 to pay $26M to music creators, and a $10M toward future licensing royalties.
Napster is a music subscription service offering MP3 downloads and unlimited on- demand music for as low as $5 per month. Plans start with MP3 credits (5, 15 or 60) to download songs from Napster’s library of 10 million tracks covering all kinds of music, from all major labels and thousands of independent artists. Unlimited streaming music allows members to listen to individual tracks as often as they like—or choose from commercial-free radio stations and expertly programmed playlists.
