Napster Resurrected in Japan

I don't know if you remember what Napster was or even if you have lived those days. I did and for the ones of you that don't know what Napster means, let's make a little trip in the past.

Napster was a semi peer-to-peer file sharing system, not fully peer-to-peer because it made use of some central to maintain lists of the connected computers and the files they shared while the actual transactions were independent and being managed directly between the machines.

At that moment in time, Napster was the most popular music sharing system due to its specialization exclusively in MP3 format music and a very user friendly interface, two things that made it a huge source of downloadable music, far above the traditional sources such as IRC, USENET or Hotline.

All this pirating mayhem draws the public's attention when RIAA, the heavy metal band Metallica and, a month later, the rapper Dr. Dre sued them, two actions that finally ended up with its shutdown in July 2001 and a settlement that obliged Napster to pay 26 million $ for unauthorized uses of music and 10 million $ against future licensing royalties.

The final breath of air taken by Napster was when it got acquired at a bankruptcy auction by Roxio Inc., which transformed it into a pay service and branded it as the Napster 2.0.

Now, Roxio Inc., has announced the launch of Napster Mobile on au/KDDI, a Japanese wireless network with more than 20 million customers. This new service implemented by Roxio on the Japanese network will enable the KDDI users to get full-length songs and other audio content, deliverable over-the-air onto their cellphones.

As Chris Gorog, Napster's chairman and CEO, has said "Napster Mobile's launch with au/KDDI, together with our earlier launch with NTT DoCoMo, now enables the vast majority of Japan's mobile users to enjoy Napster on the go with their mobile handsets. Analysts are projecting that mobile music will become a multi-billion dollar business in Japan over the next few years and we believe Napster is positioned extremely well to benefit from this growth".

The subscribers will pay a monthly fee of 3 $ per month and will be able to download and use music content from the Napster Mobile system using a credit based technology.

They will get 300 credits each month that will allow them to use the individual songs and ringtones as they wish and, at the same time, they also have the option to purchase additional credits at any given time in case this is necessary.

And this is how the Napster legend, a sharing system that had at least 40 million users in June 2000 according to former employees, has survived and now it got resurrected in Japan, living legally under a pay service undercover :).