Consolidation comes to the streaming music space as rivals take the fight to Spotify.
Rhapsody has been trying to make music subscription work as a model for ten years. Now, it's bought out one of its main rivals Napster – bagging its 700,000 subscription base of other assets from Best Buy.
The acquisition is expected to close on November 30th. Financial terms were not disclosed.
It marks another twist in the tortuous history of these two companies.
Napster was the illegal file sharing icon that was busted then went legal and was bought by retail giant Best Buy in 2008, with the full acquisition valued at $121 million.
Meanwhile Rhapsody was bought by RealNetworks and Viacom, but spun off in April 2010. It was always ahead of its time, but had its glory stolen by Spotify, Deezer, MOG and others in the last two years.
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It said in April it had 750k subscribers, with 26 per cent of traffic coming from mobiles.
Jon Irwin, president of Rhapsody, said: "This deal will further extend Rhapsody's lead over our competitors in the growing on-demand music market."
"There's substantial value in bringing Napster's subscribers and robust IP portfolio to Rhapsody as we execute on our strategy to expand our business via direct acquisition of members and distribution deals," Irwin said.
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