Rhapsody Wasn't Happy, So Open Source Music Service Napster.fm Changes Its Name To Peer.fm

Last week, we told you about an open source alternative to music services such as Rdio and Spotify, called Napster.fm. The name alone got our attention, and after using it, there were a few features that were reminiscent of its predecessor, which made it even cooler. Today, the service is changing its name to Peer.fm to steer clear of legal issues, since Best Buy acquired the service and brand and shipped it over to Rhapsody in 2011, or whatever is left of it. Other than that, its been business as usual for its creator, Ryan Lester. Lester tell us that he’s had nearly 100k visitors to the site, with over 59,000 users actually trying out its features. Right now, nearly 1,500 users are registered and getting all of the benefits that come with that, including its social functionality that allows you to share tracks and playlists with friends. Most of the traffic is coming from outside of the United States, 64%, with areas of the world that don’t have access to Spotify bringing the heaviest users. We chatted with Lester about his project, which is noteworthy for its open source nature, alone. He told us that he’d love to make the service available to mobile users, but is focusing on translating the service for as many languages as possible: TC: What has been the most used feature on the service thus far? Ryan Lester: Well, not surprisingly, just playing music. It’s looking like the more social-oriented features are starting to pick up some steam, but just the core music-playing functionality easily tops the rest in usage. TC: There are a lot of music services out there, why did people gravitate to yours? Ryan Lester: I think there are a few important reasons for this: 1. It’s definitely something cool and new that people into music will want to try at least once, and being open source earns a certain level of cachet and goodwill. 2. Despite still being in Beta, the quality of the software is definitely in the same league as that of its major competitors (e.g. Spotify, Google Music); on top of that, it adds a few unique features of its own like syncing music between users in real-time. 3. Napster had a cool social element which hadn’t really been precisely replicated by newer services until Peer.fm showed up. On a related note, I’m sure quite a few

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