Napster has been trying to convert its song-swapping service to a subscription model instead of its original free model, which sparked the lawsuits by copyright owners. Napster's original service shut down in July 2001 following an order by the court that it must block the transfer of copyright-protected songs.
The company has to date been unable to negotiate fee sharing terms with the record labels. Napster has publicly criticised the record labels for making unreasonable demands in these negotiations; in turn, the labels called Napster unreasonable.
Capitol Records and Virgin Records America declined to join the request by Napster, AOL Time Warner, BMG, Vivendi Universal and Sony to suspend the case.
Napster claimed 70 million users at its peak. Many of these users have since migrated to similar free services. It remains to be seen if these users will accept services that charge for content.