MP3.com's Content to Be Destroyed

WCityMike writes "Vivendi Universal recently sold the MP3.com domain to CNet. However, they're not selling the approximately one million songs on the archive. (recorded by over 250,000 artists) Instead, they're simply destroying it as of December 3. MP3.com's founder and former CEO, Michael Robertson, is pleading with Vivendi to allow the Internet Archive to preserve the songs."

wow...

[ambienceman]

That's pretty messed up. What if the person put a lot of effort in using mp3.com to market their stuff? They also depended on the company to create their physical media, and those will be destroyed as well. I have friends who use it. They should at least give them the option to buy their own CDs back at the minimum price.

It seems as if mergers and acqusitions always have some negative effect on the customer.

Unfortunately, this is a major one. Shouldn't the government be able to step in? hmmmmmm afterthinking about it, it's probably best that they don't...

destroying what?

[nurb432]

Are they destroying just the copies they 'own' rights too, or are these the actual orginal songs + the only distribution rights, and the music will be lost forever?

Conspiracy theory begin here:

[icemax]

So, Vivendi, a music industry heavyweight, now owns indie music promoting mp3.com, sells it to a third party and destroys access to hundreds of thousands of independant artists. How does this not seem like a typical power-grab by the music industry??

Re:their property, their decision

[pegr]

Everybody say it with me...

"antitrust"

While it's true, they should be able to do whatever they want to do with their property, this would make an excellent anti-trust suit. Not sure if the EFF would be the appropriate "David" to their "Goliath", tho. Any ideas?

Music industry showing their hand

[carcosa30]

It seems to me that this incident is a window into the true goals of the RIAA and the music industry.

What they're trying to do here is attack a competing distribution chain. This is the whole reason they hate MP3s in the first place.

MP3s represent a method for unknown artists and styles to reach popular recognition. This is a threat to the music industry, because if that were to happen, they would have to find acts that were actually good on their own merits as opposed to mediocre copycats and sexbomb divas who only sound good because of their multi-million dollar production jobs.

I can't express my hatred for the executives and committees who make decisions like these behind closed doors and for obscure reasons.

crawler?

[Tom]

Anyone got a crawler for mp3.com? Time to make a full copy as long as we still can.

250k songs at ~5-6 MB each will require about 1.5 TB of storage. Easily within the reach of a small group of dedicated music fans.

Hell, put it up as a permanent bittorrent archive and distribute it around.

This is going too far.

[pgaffney]

That's it. That's it! These people have to be fucking stopped.

It was one thing when the consolidation of radio stations combined with neo-payola fixed it so there was nothing but top 40's crap to be heard on the radio, then they try to quash p to p networks and maintain their near complete control over distribution of MY freakin' culture and sue 12 year olds for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but if it looks like they're going to go the additional step and actually start DELETING the $%#$ing art they've gone too far.

I want these pricks out of business with their children out in the street turning tricks for wonderbread. Monday.

GOD I've got a hangover.

of course they are not selling it

[Anonymous Coward]

the content isnt their's to sell,
unless you want to distribute the cash amongst 250,000 artists cos iam pretty sure you do not assign mp3.com commercial distribution, publication, and wave your song rights so a multimillion dollar company can sell them without you getting a bean

this is a good thing, shame they are destroying gigs of music but better that than a few more leeches get rich off the backs of creative people

No need to delete.

[cqpalzm]

The Register reports [theregister.com] that archive.org is more than willing to host the 5 terabytes of music. So now, other than a specific desire on the part of VU to see the music deleted, the music should still be able to exist.

VU won't have to worry about the bandwidth, the storage, or anything having to do with the old content that it does not want to.

Re:Library of Alexandria, meet mp3.com

[JeffTL]

Maybe it's not Great Library material, but you gotta admit there's SOME pretty good stuff at mp3.com

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:destroying what?

[bugbread]

Just their copies. Mp3.com never had exclusive rights, and most people put their tracks on mp3.com as well as their own private home pages, etc. The music isn't being lost, but is being scattered to the 4 winds. (By the way, IAAmp3.comA (I Am An mp3.com Artist))

Re:What about the public library?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the "Library of Congress" [loc.gov]. You submit a copy of a work you want to register for copyright. They keep it. This is why "Libraries of Congress" is used as a facetious measure of amount of data on Slashdot.

Transition to iTunes?

[Hollinger]

So, how many of these artists have already made the transition to iTunes? To anyone that might have content on mp3.com: take a look at the iTunes model. You might find a new home for your works.

For example, I can promote a new band I just discovered, Zero 7 [edgesuite.net] by providing a link like this, which should go directly into the iTMS.

What you'll have to do is find an iTunes Music Store Partner. Individual artists will not be able to add their content. However, I think I read somewhere that cdbaby was working on becoming one. Try contacting them.

Re:Library of Alexandria, meet mp3.com

[Jacek Poplawski]

You should compare old Soundgarden stuff (for example spooman, heard it? seen video?) with new shit. It's exactly same story like with other "progressive" bands: Metallica, Paradise Lost, Theatre Of Tragedy, Anathema, etc, etc... From real music into tv/radio crap. But hey! It's their own shit^H^H^H^Hmusic. They can do what they want.

This is REALLY a damn shame

[anethema]

Some friends of mine used to use mp3.com as one of their main ways to get their music out to people. And it works. They were soon the #1 'metal' band on the site, and people in the USA had heard of them from all over the place. It was really amazing to see their growth due in large part to people finding them on mp3.com. I even mentioned their name once to my sister and she had heard of them two provinces away.

After plenty of downloads and some dedicated touring, they were recently signed to maverik records.

So you cant say that sites like mp3.com doesnt help get the music out there, or isnt good for fledgling artists.

Oops, their band name is stutterfly if someone wanted to know.
Here is the mp3.com link [mp3.com].