The Brand that Won't Die

I swear, Napster is like that bald dude from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - no matter how many times it gets run over by a post-apocalyptic wartruck, it keeps coming back to life.

Best Buy has decided to gobble up online music venture (and, in many ways, arch-enemy) Napster Inc., paying about double today's market value for the company. Best Buy already offers a digital music program in conjunction with RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. It's unclear whether much of Napster's technology will survive the merger: Best Buy will likely try to port the 700,000 Napster customers over to the Rhapsody service, and send the brand to the scrap heap.