- Napster is reborn as an app for music creation and collaboration with AI
- Human-like AI music collaborators help you create the music you want
- There are apps for iOS and Android, as well as a web version.
Anyone old enough to remember the file-sharing boom of the early 2000s will remember Napster. It was the music-sharing platform that broke the Internet, defied copyright law, and was sued out of existence, only to have its core idea later reborn by Spotify, Apple, and the rest.
Now Napster is back, and instead of just sharing music, it’s about creating and collaborating on it using AI. The new Napster app for iOS and Android (or via web) is based entirely on AI-generated content and real-time creation tools. You can think of Napster as a kind of hub for all audio. It offers music, podcasts, AI-powered wellness experiences, and what the company calls “collaborative creation.”
“Napster was born to break boundaries and we’re doing it again,” said John Acunto, CEO of Napster. “We see this as a declaration that the era of passive consumption is over. Fans are not here to receive a playlist. They are here to co-create, merge their identity with AI artists in real time and shape the soundtrack of a new era.”
How to use the new Napster
With no traditional record companies involved, Napster is certainly pushing the boundaries of music once again. However, it’s entering a space already occupied by traditional companies like Suno, which arguably offer more detailed tools for creating AI-generated music, as well as a lot of backlash against the whole concept.
The plus side is that it’s certainly easy to create music with the new Napster. Once you load the app, you’re asked to choose an AI collaborator to help you create music. Each AI mentor represents a different genre: hip-hop, rock, country, pop, indie, etc. Simply select your musical mentor and then write what type of music you would like to create. The app then generates tracks for you. You don’t have much control over how the music sounds from that point on.
I downloaded the Napster app and asked one of their AI music collaborators, @nyx Nina Jenkins, their hip-hop music specialist, to help me create something with a “Bristol, UK sound, like Massive Attack.” After a few seconds, Bristol Nightsmy 3:07 minute AI creation was ready and available to share. It even came with a video of Nina rapping, although it wasn’t lip-synced to the song. The app also generated some similar tracks for you to listen to.
They all sounded moody and downbeat, as requested, but a little soulless and bland, a little too perfect, but still pleasant enough to listen to, which is a familiar criticism of most AI-generated music.
Since it used “Massive Attack” and “Bristol” as lyrics in the songs, I don’t think Napster really understood anything about the classic UK band or the 1990s Bristol trip-hop scene.
What about artists?
This isn’t the first time Napster has ventured into AI. Last year, it launched a hardware product called Napster View AI, which placed holographic AI experts on your desktop to help you with whatever problem you were working on. And if you use the new Napster app through your macOS app, you can interact with music experts through Napster View hardware on a dedicated second screen.
The conversational AI video companions in the Napster app are a nice touch and make music creation feel more collaborative. However, given the backlash against AI music from mainstream artists, it’s hard to know how Napster’s new direction will reach anyone who remembers its heyday in the early 2000s. That said, it will almost certainly appeal to a younger audience.
Whether that’s enough to make Napster relevant again is an open question. For older listeners, the brand still carries the baggage of lawsuits, backlash and a music industry it once helped change. For younger users, none of that history really matters. For them, Napster is not a warning; It’s just another creative platform in a world where music is something you generate, remix and share in real time, and that doesn’t involve real artists.
If the original Napster sought to take control away from the industry, this new version is betting that the next revolution will also try to take control away from the artist.
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