Napster Radio relaunches with an ad-free premium tier

Napster has redesigned and relaunched its Napster Radio service, with an ad-free premium tier.

As with similar services such as iTunes Radio and Pandora, Napster Radio users can access playlists curated by Napster, based on genre or “mood”, or create their own stations. The premium tier allows skipping between songs, review and preview functions, and is available on iOS and Android.

Of course, the name ’Napster’ is still heavily tied to music piracy, which has been the company’s big stumbling block since a series of legal battles at the turn of the century squashed the file-sharing site, and forced Napster into less legally-murky revenue streams.

The young company were slapped with $36 million worth of copyright settlements, driving them into a hastily-conceived subscription model in order to subsidise their considerable legal costs. This move quickly halted the young company’s rise; the very public lawsuits against Napster by the likes of Metallica, Dr. Dre and the RIAA meant their name was widely associated with free content and music piracy.  There began a decade-long struggle to re-establish Napster as a major player in the music market.

The company name and fast-dwindling assets traded hands numerous times since the initial shut-down: an adult-entertainment company bought Napster, which was quickly sold on to Roxio – who rebranded the fledgling online store PressPlay as Napster 2.0. In 2008, Best Buy bought the company, before selling it to Rhapsody, who own it today.

As Napster Radio attempts to find its feet in a market place that is being quickly swamped by the newly-launched iTunes Radio, it is clear that the company’s trailblazing days are far behind them. Whether they can succeed against the big players will hinge on a number of factors, most pressingly: whether people can be trained to see Napster as anything but the rogue company that burst open the digital piracy floodgates back in the late ’90s.