Napster is back – and its new AI-first app wants you to help create music, not just listen to it.
- Napster is reborn as an AI music creation and collaboration app
- 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 a music sharing platform that broke the Internet, defied copyright law, and was sued out of existence, only for its core concept to be reborn later by Spotify, Apple, and others.
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 the web) is built entirely around AI-generated content and real-time creative tools. You can think of Napster as something of a hub for all things audio. It offers AI-driven music, podcasts, wellness experiences, and what the company calls “co-creation.”
“Napster was born to break boundaries, and we’re doing it again,” said John Acunto, CEO of Napster. “We see this as an announcement that the age of underutilization is over. Fans came to be fed playlists. They came here to mix, merge their identities 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 certainly pushed the boundaries of music. However, it enters a space already crowded by incumbents like Suno, who arguably offer more detailed tools for creating AI-generated music, and more pushback against the whole concept.
On the other hand, it’s really easy to create music with the new Napster. Once you load the app, you are asked to select an AI collaborator to help you create music. Each AI mentor represents a different genre – hip-hop, rock, country, pop, indie, and so on. Simply select your music advisor, then type in what kind of music you’d like to make. The app then makes the tracks for you. You don’t have as much control over how the music sounds from that point on.
I downloaded the Napster app and asked one of its AI music collaborators, @nyx Nina Jenkins, its hip-hop music expert, to help me do something with a “Massive Attack-like Bristol, UK sound.” After a few seconds, Bristol Nightsmy 3:07 minute AI creation, was ready and available for sharing. It even came with a video of Nina rapping, although it didn’t match the lyrics of the song. The app also makes a few matching tracks for me to listen to.
They all sound dynamic and punchy, as requested, but a little soulless and raw, too perfect, but also fun enough to listen to, which is a common criticism of a lot of AI-generated music.
Since it used “Massive Attack” and “Bristol” as the names of the songs, I don’t think Napster understood anything about the old UK band or the Bristol trip-hop scene of the 1990s.
What about artists?
This isn’t the first time Napster has dabbled in AI. Last year, it released a hardware product called Napster View AI, which put holographic AI experts on your desktop to help with whatever problem you were working on. And if you’re using the new Napster app for macOS, you can interact with music experts through the Napster View hardware on a dedicated second screen.
The AI video chat companions in the Napster app are a nice touch and make music creation feel more interactive. However, given the backlash against AI music from traditional musicians, it’s hard to know how Napster’s new approach will come across to anyone who remembers its future in the early 2000s. That said, it will probably appeal to a younger audience.
Whether that’s enough to make Napster relevant is also an open question. For older listeners, the genre still carries the burdens of lawsuits, backlash, and the music industry it once helped fix. For younger users, you don’t have that important history. For them, Napster is not a cautionary tale; it’s another creative platform in the world where music is something you produce, remix, and share in real time, and that doesn’t involve actual artists.
If the original Napster was about taking control away from the industry, this new version is betting that the next revolution is about taking control away from the artist, too.
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