Oh, Napster’s journey has been a rough one when you look down at the history of the famed peer-to-peer music sharing service from Justin Timberlake Sean Parker. In 1999 Napster became widely available and widely known as the destination to illegally download and share music among  friends and strangers around the world. It wasn’t long before the Recording Industry Association of America (with resistance led by heavy metal band Metallica) forced Parker to shut down Napster so the company could find a way to make it work through legal channels. While Napster was getting battered with legal woes, other P2P music software cropped up like Morpheus, Kazaa, and BearShare. Eventually all of these P2P players were forced to either close up shop or transition into a subscription service. Napster took the latter route and lived on for a while. Late last week, though, the final hammer was nailed into the coffin. Rhapsody, the world’s #1 digital music subscription service, bought out Napster and integrated its music library into its own. In other words, Napster is no longer its own entity and the Napster name and cute logo that lasted all this time have fallen by the wayside.

Napster’s legacy will forever remain a part of the history of the music industry. What Parker pioneered in the late 90s and early 2000s would help lead to the introduction of the iTunes Store and new, innovative ways of legally purchasing and sharing music. And with that let us say in unison: RIP Napster.

Update: And the Internet cried, “Not so fast!” According to The Register, the Napster brand will live on in the UK and Germany. So there you go.

[Via CNET]