On Thursday, Napster will officially merge with Rhapsody, the largest on-demand music service in the United States. Rhapsody signed an agreement last month to purchase Napster for an undisclosed sum from its parent company, Best Buy.
Napster originally launched in 1999 and quickly brought a ruckus to the digital and music worlds. Two years later it was shut down by court order while the Recording Industry Association of America filed a series of lawsuits against Napster users who illegally downloaded music for free from dorms and bedrooms nationwide. A series of similar services like Kazaa and LimeWire sprang up behind Napster as downloading individual tracks and burning mix CDs became a permanent trend.
Eventually record companies accepted that music fans were no longer willing to buy entire CDs in order to listen to a couple songs, and iTunes' 99-cents-per-song model emerged as a compromise of sorts.
The iTunes model eventually saw competition form music-streaming sites like Grooveshark, Rhapsody and European competitor Spotify, where Napster co-founder Sean Parker is a major investor.
Under Best Buy, Napster operated as a subscription service while keeping the name that established it as an iconic symbol of major shifts in the music industry and digital culture. But, beginning Thursday, even the name will be no more.
What are your memories of Napster? What is Napster's legacy? Let us know in the comments.