Rhapsody is going back to 1999 and rebranding itself as Napster

The music streaming service Rhapsody has announced plans to rebrand itself as Napster. The old, and infamous, music sharing service was founded in 1999 and its brand was bought by Rhapsody in 2011.

Rhapsody announced the upcoming move to the Napster brand on its blog, stating:

No changes to your playlists, favorites, albums, and artists. Same music. Same service. Same price. 100% the music you love. Stay tuned!

Apparently, Rhapsody believes that using the name of Napster, despite its rather controversial history of being used to pirate digital music, is a better-known brand. Indeed, the company has already changed its name from Rhapsody to Napster in Canada in November 2015. There's no word on when this latest change will occur.

So far, Rhapsody has not updated their Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 apps to Windows 10 and UWP. We'll see if this rebranding changes things.

See Rhapsody in the Windows Store

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John Callaham