Napster sets course for NFTs with acquisition of Mint Songs

Napsterthe pioneer of MP3 file sharing, has bought the platform Mint Songs and intends very soon to launch into the NFT.

Wednesday, Napster announced that its investment arm Napster Ventures had bought Mint Songs for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition aims to bring Naspter into Web3, according to a press release. The former star peer-to-peer file-sharing service, which has now become a less popular online music store, was itself acquired in the spring of 2022 by two major Web3 companies, Algorand and Hivemind.

Founded in Washington in 2021, Mint Songs is a marketplace dedicated to the music compatible with Ethereum and Polygon. Artists can sell their tracks in NFT format and have at their disposal tools to develop ” Web3 communities “. The marketplace has raised a total of 4.3 million dollars as part of two seeds including Coinbase Ventures participation, Dapper Labs and Castle Island Ventures.

We think the natural next step for the Napster service is to include collectibles that fans can get as rewards for engaging with artists they love or that they can buy to collect and share. We already have hundreds of thousands of artist showcases where our fans go to listen to music every day, so adding collectibles is very contextual to the fan experience,” said Jon Vlassopulos, Napster’s new boss.

The executive added that “collectibles” (ed. NFT) of the artists will be available on Napster in the next months.

For his part, Matt Zhang, founder of Hivemind, said that the buyout of Mint Songs was a “fundamental step” in making Napster a major player in the Web3 music ecosystem.

Several global industry giants, including Universal Music and Warner Music Group, have plunged into the Web3 in the last few years.

This fall, in France, the Sacem said that Web3 would change the relationship between content creators and their fans. It has since partnered with a startup to allow rights holders to issue Music NFT And to receive “new compensation”.

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