You wouldn’t download a car, but what about a notoriously shady music festival?
Bad news: the world has been turned on its head in unprecedented ways this past year alone. Good news: the first thing that’s made sense in a long time just happened. LimeWire bought Fyre Fest.
For the uninitiated, LimeWire was huge in the 2000s as a free peer-to-peer file sharing platform, used primarily for downloading and distributing pirated music. There were other big names in file sharing, like Napster, founded around the same time. It launched in 1999 before shutting down in 2001 due to injunction. BitTorrent came out that same year, and The Pirate Bay is still one of the most-visited torrent indexes around.
Now, I didn’t even know LimeWire was still around, let alone making big money moves. They relaunched in 2022 with a mission to reinvent digital content sharing. The kicker is that LimeWire’s acquisition of the Fyre Fest brand isn’t exactly to launch another doomed music event. According to LimeWire CEO Julian Zehetmayr, it’s to preserve the meme like some sort of internet culture archeologist.
“Fyre became a symbol of hype gone wrong, but it also made history,” said Zehetmayr in a statement. “We’re not bringing the festival back – we’re bringing the brand and the meme back to life. This time with real experiences, and without the cheese sandwiches.”
According to a report from Business Wire, the acquisition occurred after a competitive bid against other brands and creative agencies. This included Maximum Effort, the company co-founded by Ryan Reynolds. He congratulated LimeWire on their winning bid, writing, “Congrats to LimeWire for their winning bid for Fyre Fest. I look forward to attending their first event but will be bringing my own palette of water.”
LimeWire buys fyre festival brand in order to preserve the meme
Apparently, LimeWire’s plan for the Fyre Fest brand is to make it totally self-aware of its chaotic history. Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule initially organized the festival to take place on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma in April 2017. Celebrities and influencers promoted it ad nauseam, and nearly 500 unsuspecting fans spent thousands of dollars on the supposed “luxury” music festival experience.
Reality was more than a disappointment; it was a disaster. Attendees were given cheese sandwiches instead of the gourmet meal packages they paid for, and the accommodations were far from the luxury villas they were promised. There were problems with security, food and water, medical services, and artist relations. Basically, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Fyre Fest canceled and dismantled the event, but left people stranded on the island. Eventually, things devolved into more of a rescue mission than anything.
In 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and forfeited $26 million for wire fraud. Those involved filed several other lawsuits against McFarland and the brand over the years. That didn’t stop him from selling tickets to Fyre 2 in February 2025, which would allegedly take place in April. Fyre Fest canceled the initial dates after two Mexican cities denied their reported involvement with the festival, although allegedly just rescheduled them instead.
LimeWire’s alleged plan is to keep the unhinged spirit of Fyre Fest alive while imbuing it with a new sense of clarity and control. “We’re not here to repeat the mistakes — we’re here to own the meme and do it right. Fyre became a symbol of everything that can go wrong. Now it’s our chance to show what happens when you pair cultural relevance with real execution,” added Marcus Feistl, LimeWire COO.
There’s a waitlist available where supporters can get first dibs on announcements from the soon-to-be improved brand. “What could possibly go wrong?” LimeWire asks on the landing page. What, indeed.
Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images
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