Napster reborn? That happened a long time ago, and the service is still going under Rhapsody’s wing in Europe. Yet Napster.fm is something different: a web service launched by developer Ryan Lester which promises “Napster reimagined for the modern Web”. What that means is a service (well, more a hack really, in the positive sense of the word) that in Lester’s words is “just grabbing existing content on YouTube based on metadata (titles, artists, etc.) from the Discogs database” – he thus warns users not to be “too selective about which version of a song you’re after”. Desktop-only for now, its key feature is real-time syncing – either for one user’s Napster.fm windows across all their computers, or for multiple users to listen together to playlists created on the site. It’s also open source: “If Napster.fm were ever abandoned or shut down, the community could immediately rehost it,” explains the site. The threat, we’d imagine, is less from rightsholders and more from Rhapsody’s lawyers on trademark grounds. Lester clearly isn’t taking himself too seriously with it. “Will I be sued for using this?” asks the FAQ. “Absolutely.” “Holy shit, seriously?” “No.”
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