Best Buy officially acquired 83.3 percent of Napster's outstanding stock during a tender offer that ran through last Friday. Best Buy paid $127 million, or $2.65 per share, to acquire Napster.
The electronics retailer now owns 39,301,255 shares of Napster.
The company does not own 90 percent of Napster's outstanding shares, so Best Buy plans to snap up at least seven more percent of Napster. After the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the Napster buyout at the beginning of October, purchasing a few more percent is not expected to be a problem.
"We're pleased that our tender offer was successful. We look forward to concluding the merger so that we can begin the work of increasing Napster’s subscribers and building on its capabilities in the digital media space,” said David Morrish, Best Buy executive V.P. of connected digital solutions.
Napster helped bring peer-to-peer file sharing to the masses, but was quickly shunned by the record labels and eventually was reborn as a legitimate music service. Napster came back as a Roxio-owned pay for play music service that never was able to take off due to strong competition from other similar services.
The company still operates its own online music store, but hopes combining it with Napster will give it a viable competitor against the Apple iTunes juggernaut.
Now that the deal is officially complete, it will be interesting to see how Best Buy plans to chip away at iTunes, which currently dominates more than 70 percent of the online music market.
