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Music Media

mp3.com Acquired by CNet 284

Posted by CmdrTaco from the things-are-getting-interesting dept.
bmarklein writes "Looks like mp3.com is no more, at least not in its current form. According to an announcement on an mp3.com message board, CNet has acquired assets of mp3.com. The statement is very vague, but it says that following the redirection of the mp3.com domain on December 2nd, "all content will be deleted from [mp3.com's] servers." However they do plan to eventually introduce "new and enhanced artist services"."
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mp3.com Acquired by CNet More

mp3.com Acquired by CNet

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  • Cnet == Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We shall see mp3.com become WMA.com

    • Bad News for Artists (Score:5, Insightful)

      by yintercept ( 517362 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @10:51AM (#7474107) Homepage Journal
      The original MP3.com was the best thing to happen for independent artists in the history of recorded music. It was a nice, simple program where artists could upload songs, and make some beer money. Unfortunately, MP3.com wasted the entire opportunity on its stupid conjecture that they were so large, that they could effectively rewrite copyright laws just through their will alone.

      Before we jump into the diatribe about how MP3 couldn't exist unless it had the top 40 music, I want to point out that the whole top 40 or die conjecture was built on the false premise held by all of the dot coms...that is: a company had to monopolize the market to exist.

      Companies can exist without being a monopoly.

      MP3.com was a great program. It was destroyed by arrogant snits who rejected the notion of rule of law. If MP3.com simply gave up on the Beam-It-Up program, it would have been in the position after the fall of Napster to capture the coveted position of internet's primary source for music. Instead, they wasted the company on a multimillion dollar law suit that anyone familar with the court system knew in advance that they would lose.

      MP3.com was the one viable alternative to this ultra intrusive world that Microsoft is creating where every song you listen to is monitored and analyzed by Big Brother Bill, and independent artists are once again shuffled off to the furthest fringes.

      • "independent artists" (Score:3, Insightful)

        by wytcld ( 179112 )
        Historically, much of the greatest art, architecture and music was made to glorify the mythology of the Church (or Islam, or Buddha ...). Our problem now is that the central myth of Capitalism is that of the individual entrepreneur, and this confuses those trying to make a living in the arts. They so often get caught up in trying to live the myth instead of merely trying to portray it to the greater glory of the earthly powers who hold the purses. The mythic character of the independent genius building a be
        • Most of the "commercial" music (music which is played on for-profit radio stations), at least in the US, is pretty bland. It's had the rough edges sanded off in order to make it "unoffensive" to a larger audience, which helps to sell more CDs, concert tickets, and radio advertisements. But this doesn't necessarily make it very good.

          Artists which are part of smaller labels are not under pressure to produce music with these qualities. They're doing it because they love music. That's not to say that the m
      • Ah, that post made me laugh. You used to be able to load a lot of songs to mp3.com, and as they were downloaded mp3 was supposed to pay the artist. Later, they cut everyone down to 3 free songs. That's also when they changed how the CDs look. It used to be they'd use the cover you supplied, but now you need to give them money so they'll use your cover. They've never paid my band royalties for the songs. They've never paid us for the cds that have been bought.

        They also started changing how much they ow

  • Fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Evil Adrian ( 253301 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:44AM (#7473212) Homepage
    I hope they don't ruin it for people like me that just like to write songs and let people hear them

    • Re:Fuck? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GreyWolf3000 ( 468618 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:49AM (#7473248) Journal
      One thing Michael Robertson wanted to do with mp3.com is provide listeners with an alternative to mainstream garbage. One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.

      As a musician myself, I find this as sad as I find it true.

      • Re:Fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:58AM (#7473305) Journal
        Maybe not, but it would still be nice with a site where people interested in the art of music could get a place to introduce themselves on and host their music on. I liked mp3.com originally, but then it got a radical layout change so it became very hard to navigate the site IMHO (talking about the most recent layout with black background making it look like a bad porn site and not professional and clean at all).

        I really enjoyed the service as a legal but still free way to get some good music in tidy categories to make everything easy to find. Soon enough, you got favorite artists that matched your music taste.

        Deviant Art [deviantart.com] is a fabolous site for all sorts of graphics artists, whether they like design computer icons,application skins, like to draw full fledged freehand drawings, or is into photography. I really hope we'll see an equivalent site for music!

        • Re:Fuck? (Score:4, Informative)

          by subsolar2 ( 147428 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:10AM (#7473373)
          Maybe not, but it would still be nice with a site where people interested in the art of music could get a place to introduce themselves on and host their music on. I liked mp3.com originally, but then it got a radical layout change so it became very hard to navigate the site IMHO (talking about the most recent layout with black background making it look like a bad porn site and not professional and clean at all).

          Well you could try the Internet Underground Music Archive http://www.iuma.com/ ... it's been around longer than MP3.com I believe, just does not have the mindshare.

      • Re:Fuck? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by muffen ( 321442 )
        One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.

        I like electronic music, Astral Projection being one of my favourite bands. I have every sinlge mp3 they have ever had up on mp3.com, and I have ordered several CDs from mp3.com, most of them being Astral Projection, but a few others as well.
        I don't know that mp3.com looks like now, but when I was using it (haven't used it for about 6 months), you could see how much every band was earning. Looks to me like Astral Projectio

      • Re:Fuck? (Score:5, Funny)

        by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:22AM (#7473447) Journal
        One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.

        Dude,

        I buy alternative music all the time. It is also known as "Top 40".

        Love,

        America's Public

      • Re:Fuck? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Marlor ( 643698 )
        In Australia, we have a Government-sponsored national youth radio station called TripleJ [abc.net.au]. This is how almost all "alternative" artists find an audience.

        TripleJ is extremely influential, and is one of the largest radio stations in the country despite (or perhaps because of) it's focus on alternative music. Imagine college radio, but on a national scale (i.e. a bigger budget, more professionalism, much higher profile).

        Once an artist gets a significant airplay on TripleJ, they often make the transition to co

      • Re:Fuck? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by I Be Hatin' ( 718758 )
        One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.

        No, what it proves is that no one buys such alternatives from mp3.com consistently. The problem was their business model, not the fact that people weren't interested...

      • One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.

        No one consistenly buys anyone's music. Check your ablbum collection. Most of them will be by different artists and it's rare you have more than three by any one of them. Bands come and go, one that lasts is very rare. People get sick of it and want a real life.

        MP3.com proved that anyone could have a place to put and promote their music. The RIAA once again proved they would not tollerate competition and nuked it. MP3.com

        • Maybe you buy disposable crap, but looking at my cd collection I see the entire works of NIN, nearly complete Pink Floyd, Beatles, Hendrix, Radiohead, Phish, lots of live Grateful Dead releases (in addition to dozens of bootlegs(thankyou furthurnet.net)) buncha Aphex Twin, buncha Orb, lots of Miles Davis, all of Beethovens symphonies, and tons of Bach. If someone produces a good record, chances are they're gonna be able to produce another good record. If someone can't produce more than one good record, the
      • One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.

        Too bad Michael Robertson wasn't concerned with shipping quality product. I bought from them, more than once. The discs sold by the original MP3.com weren't properly manufactured CDs but blank-sided CDROMs, obviously .WAV rips of the mp3 material on their site instead of dubs of the master tapes or commercially printed discs. It would be no surprise to find out the receptionist was burning them while proceessing billing. Some

    • What the fuck you mean, "write songs and let people hear"? This is business, man, you gotta make a buck! Ever heard a banker say "I just like to give money away and let people spend"? Or a farmer who "likes to make food so people will eat"?

      People like you are ruinning this industry. You so-called artists, making songs just for the fun of it and getting in the way of honest hard workers like Britney who are on it for the right reasons, to make a couple of millions dollars a month.

      Thank God for RIAA and the
    • You better get signed and popular REAL quick then.
  • But cool doesn't pay for servers, bandwidth, staff, and so on. And nor did all those Sephora banner ads...
    • However, CNET does. :-)

      I wish them good luck in their relaunch of the new version of this artist site.
      • But, CNET will also need the sum-total-benefit of MP3.com to outweigh the sum-total-cost of running it.

        I actually wonder what CNET is really buying, is it mostly the domain name?

    • Why didn't mp3.com collaborate with bittorrent, gnutella, etc. to build a collaborative network? Their most popular music could have been mirrored on many hundreds of nodes, and their bandwidth costs could have been slashed.

      They could have written an "mp3com.exe" which acted as a distributed client rump webserver. Their website could then dynamically alter the URLs of popular songs, allowing IE surfers to download from the distributed clients, sparing mp3.com's bandwidth.

      Users could be motivated to inst

  • Could be worse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jp31415926 ( 722252 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:45AM (#7473219) Homepage
    CNET does a good job with most of their sites. I use download.com [download.com] almost as much as I use Freshmeat [freshmeat.net]. I look forward to seeing how they handle this baby.
    • If I'm looking to browse offerings in a category or sorted by a specific brand, it's a great site. Usually I do the initial research somewhere else (deja, epinions, etc) and stop by shopper.com to figure out who's got it and for what.

    • Re:Could be worse (Score:2, Insightful)

      by notoriousE ( 723905 )
      download.com dropped linux application support not too long ago, the apps were updated too often for them to keep up with. hopefuly they will be more dedicated to mp3
    • Download.com started sucking hardcore when they started charging a listing fee. There is hardly any freeware on there anymore; just a bunch of shitty shareware. And calling everything "free to try" just pisses me off. What the hell is wrong with just calling it shareware?

  • mp3.com? (Score:5, Funny)

    by fred ugly ( 125371 ) <[fugilyfred] [at] [hotmail.com]> on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:47AM (#7473228)
    don't you mean mp3.com.com?

  • MP3.com (Score:2, Interesting)

    by guacamolefoo ( 577448 )
    I link to MP3.com's website from a number of websites I host as a legit place to pick up some MP3 content, and I got a notice about this in my mail this morning. I have gotten celtic music and Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie from the site, and I sort of liked it. Enough to link to the site anyway. We'll have to see what happens to it, but this probably falls into the Napster/death of dotcom type notice category.

    GF.
    • I have gotten celtic music and Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie from the site

      Funny, when I visited the site, I only got two dead trolls.

      Of course, this post is a troll... so that makes three.
    • "...Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie..."

      A Slashdot dream band. Can I choose the trolls?

  • C|net's FUD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:47AM (#7473236)
    I see... So, this was the reason for Cnet to spread FUD about iPod.

    • I think you're on to something (Score:5, Informative)

      by rgoer ( 521471 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:53AM (#7473273)
      http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5102324-1.html [cnet.com]

      That's the FUD he's talking about--the bullshit "review" from two weeks ago. You remember: "C|net presents the 5 most obvious things that could be wrong with any handheld electronic device."

      • We too have run our fair share of iPod-centric headlines--for a good reason. The iPod is the most popular MP3 player in the world, and it still makes other players look and feel inelegant in comparison.

        Don't get me wrong; it's still our favorite overall MP3 player. Although everyone can think of reasons why they want an iPod, I've decided to use this column to list a few reasons why not to buy one.

        Yeah, boy, they were really harsh and unfair. I own an iPod. I love my iPod. I take it with me everywhere.

    • How was it FUD? Don't just claim it's crap without addressing his points:

      - Short battery life: TRUE. Apple's website claims that the battery life is 8 hours, whereas the author at CNet claims "six-plus". Seems about right, given variation from manufacturers' claims and user's experience. This is a valid complaint! I use a compactflash-based player for partly this reason (and cost, more on this in a second)

      - Jogging enthusiasts need not apply: NOT SURE. I don't like his reasoning here, especially the
  • Hold and sell!! Hold and Sell!

    Here's [biz.com] my favorite dot-com vestige. That era is forevermore going to stay part of the information culture...

  • A guess (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 3Suns ( 250606 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:50AM (#7473260) Homepage
    One possibility for "new artist services" is that they will be making a kind of mix between iTunes and mp3.com, serving as a digital-only publisher for small artists. I've got nothing to back this up, but it could be pretty cool if they did it right.

  • In other words, another iTunes competitor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spoot ( 104183 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:52AM (#7473268) Homepage
    I know they didn't spell it out, but it's pretty obvious. As Steve Job's said, I'm not sure why anyone would want to get on the bandwagon, it's a losing propisition. Apple is leading everyone in this area, and losing their shirts.

    Anyway, it's kind of sad that they are going away. Honestly, since Vivendi bought the site, it lost most of its charm. I joined mp3.com in the beginning. Posted tons of song. It was a great site for amateur musicians and folks on the fringe. As a songwriter, it was a good place to park tunes and have folks listen to them. But with the purchase by V/U and the limitations (three songs, no pay for play, etc...) the shine quickly faded. Sad to see it go, but I really think that it died a long time ago, just that no one told them to shut off the lights. Gotta make sure I take a screen shot for old time sakes.

    http://mp3.com/jford [mp3.com]

    • As a songwriter, it was a good place to park tunes and have folks listen to them.

      One problem: What if "folks" include has-been songwriters from the 1950s and 1960s who sue people like you, alleging plagiarism [slashdot.org]? "No, I never heard it" is not a defense because if you have overheard it at least once on the radio or on some department store's elevator music, you are considered to have had "access" to the work.

    • Vivendi bought the site

      Vivendi, or whatever face of the world's five big music publishers, was only able to buy mp3.com because they had crushed them in court for the mymp3 service. The service alowed you to put a CD into your computer and then have all of the music available at mp3.com's web site when you wanted it. The music industry claimed this was a republication, though no one but you could listen to the music, and won and was awarded all sorts of money.

      limitations (three songs, no pay for play,

  • Spot the scam... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by magiccap22 ( 318891 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:53AM (#7473277)
    They're keeping all artist's money that have less than $25 in their account at closing. They'll claim that this is because of the administrative costs in paying this money out, but are they going to carry this credit forward into the new system?

    MP3.com will perform a final artist accounting and check distribution on or around December 1, 2003. Any artist account with a balance of at least $25.00 will qualify to receive a payment in the final artist accounting (reduced from the usual requirement of $50.00).

    Rather like Superman II, I bet all these small bits of money add up to a considerable sum...

    • A solution? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by raygundan ( 16760 )
      Would it be possible to just buy enough more music from yourself to bump your account over $25, and then cash out?

      I'm not sure what comission they take, but if it's small, it might be worth it.
    • That was Superman III actually and it was a fairly horrid movie. Perhaps only beaten by Superman IV.
      It did become funny though when they referenced it in Office Space.
    • Rather like Superman II, I bet all these small bits of money add up to a considerable sum...

      That would be Superman III, with Richard Pryor. I doubt Zod could hack a mainframe.
  • It seems to me like Cnet bought the domain-name, a non-compete promise and not much else.

  • Hopefully... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MP3Chuck ( 652277 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @08:57AM (#7473298) Homepage Journal
    MP3.com was going down the tubes for quite some time... I bailed out shortly after they cut off free artist signup and laid off all "non-essential" staff. A clear sign of things to come.

    I have to say, though, CNet is a bit of a suprise. But they probably have the capital to do something worthwhile. Something aimed at highlighting talented artists whose music people want to buy... as opposed to anyone willing to fork out money a la MP3.com auction style. Well ... I can hope. At least there's less chance of them whoring the corporate Label music...
  • as to who will be the last one or two standing after everyone has an online music store.

    This comment [slashdot.org] was in the Wal-Mart post.

  • Here's the email they sent to their users. (Score:5, Informative)

    by aduthie ( 530266 ) <andrew@dut h i e m m .com> on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:01AM (#7473319) Homepage
    I was registered at the site, though never a paid user. This email was sent last night at about 9:00 pm CST.

    -----

    MP3.com Announcement

    CNET Networks, Inc announced today that it has acquired certain assets of MP3.com, Inc.

    Please be advised that on Tuesday, December 2, 2003 at 12:00 PM PST the MP3.com website will no longer be accessible in its current form.

    CNET Networks, Inc. plans to introduce a new MP3 music service in the near future. If you would like to receive email updates on this service, including an invitation to a special members-only preview, please sign up here.

    MP3.com is not transferring your personal information to CNET Networks, Inc. or any other third party.

    On behalf of all of us at MP3.com we thank you for your patronage and continued support. It has been a privilege to host one of the largest and most diverse collections of music in the world. MP3.com wishes to express its sincere thanks to each of you for making us your premier destination for music online.

    Sincerely,
    MP3.com

    P.S. Remember that to receive email updates about CNET's new MP3 service and an invite to the members-only preview, you should sign up here today.

    • Longer version sent to artists using mp3.com (Score:4, Informative)

      by benjymous ( 69893 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:26AM (#7473475) Homepage
      I'm signed up as an artist (and have one crappy mp3 of my own creation up there) and recieved a longer more detailed automated mail

      --

      CNET Networks, Inc announced today that it has acquired certain assets of MP3.com, Inc.

      Please be advised that on Tuesday, December 2, 2003 at 12:00 PM PST the MP3.com website will no longer be accessible in its current form.

      Following a transition period, CNET Networks, Inc. plans to introduce new and enhanced artist services. If you would like to receive email updates on these new services and notification when they are available, as well as an invitation to their special artists-only preview, please sign up here.

      Your personal information, music, images, related content or other information will not be transferred to CNET Networks, Inc. or any other third party.

      MP3.com's content administration tools will remain available until the site is redirected on December 2, 2003. Please note, however, that promptly following the removal of the MP3.com website, all content will be deleted from our servers and all previously submitted tapes, CD-ROMs and other media in our possession will be destroyed. We recommend that you make alternative content hosting arrangements as soon as practicable.

      Please remember to update or remove all links and references to the URL www.mp3.com. Additionally if you would like a historical record of your page, we recommend that you capture screen shots of the page as well as your artist statistics pages since they will no longer be available once the site goes offline.

      MP3.com stopped collecting monthly fees for Gold and Platinum Artist Service subscriptions as of November 3, 2003. For any monthly Gold or Platinum Artist Service subscription fees MP3.com received during the period beginning October 13, 2003 and ending November 2, 2003, MP3.com will be issuing a refund that will be prorated to reflect a termination of the subscription as of November 2, 2003. For any previously paid annual Gold and Platinum subscription fees MP3.com has received during 2003, MP3.com will be issuing a refund that will be prorated to reflect a termination of the subscription as of November 2, 2003. Any artists who subscribed to the Platinum or Gold Artist Service after November 2, 2003 will receive a full refund of any fees paid.

      If you subscribe to any other MP3.com services, you will receive separate email messages with specific information about refunds and service availability.

      Participants in the truSONIC Business Music Service program will be receiving an email update about the process for their continued participation in that program.

      All content uploads will cease immediately. Approvals of previously uploaded content will continue through Friday, November 14, 2003.

      CDs will be available for purchase through Monday, November 17, 2003 at 12:00 PM PST.

      MP3.com will perform a final artist accounting and check distribution on or around December 1, 2003. Any artist account with a balance of at least $25.00 will qualify to receive a payment in the final artist accounting (reduced from the usual requirement of $50.00). Payment of CD royalties will be included in the final artist accounting. If you anticipate a payment, please verify and update your artist account and contact information no later than November 20, 2003. Click here for help updating your contact information.

      Please be sure to check the Sophie message board and System Service Report (SSR) for further updates.

      On behalf of all of us at MP3.com we thank you for your patronage and continued support. It has been a privilege to host one of the largest and most diverse collections of music in the world. MP3.com wishes to express its sincere thanks to each of you for making our website an important part of your musical journey. We wish you continued success.

      Sincerely,
      MP3.com

      P.S. Remember that in order to receive email updates on CNET's new artist services, you should sign up here today.
    • Apparently "certain assets" means the domain name and trademark, i.e. CNet is trashing the site in order to get yet another generic name through which to serve generic crap.

  • The inside scoop (Score:5, Informative)

    by johnthorensen ( 539527 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:05AM (#7473343)
    I've a friend who is (was?) one of the few remaining employees at MP3.com and he told me that the CNet move was looking pretty damn good. Apparently the CNet guys have a really good attitude toward Internet distribution of music, and a lot of stuff is probably in the works. Supposedly they have a surprise or two up their sleeve that will put a little twist on the whole iTunes music store content. He also said that you would be amazed at the number of people with money in their accounts that mp3.com has no contact info for! Pretty interesting stuff...

    -JT

    • > Supposedly they have a surprise or two up their sleeve that will put a little twist on the whole iTunes music store content.

      Like perhaps a place where you could upload all of your songs, like a "locker", and be able to listen to them from any location. That would rock!

      Oh, wait...

    • Supposedly they [CNET] have a surprise or two up their sleeve that will put a little twist on the whole iTunes music store content

      What exactly are they buying? They don't get the address, they don't get the music, they are left with what exactly? A list of suckers dumb enough to register for spam?

      Vivandi ripped the heart out of mp3.com, now they are burring it. Here is a nice old site [mp3.com] Note all the nice downloads. Good luck finding downloads on newer sites, and don't forget to register for more great

      • I noticed the same thing. Expecially about the spam. Way back when (and this was PRE-Vivendi) I tried to buy a CD from a friend's MP3.com site. Before I even got done inputting my credit card info, I was getting multiple spams from MP3.com. I bailed on the transaction and wrote my friend to let him know why I didn't buy his CD after all. Then wrote a tirade to MP3.com's management as well, since there used to be a contact address. (The spam did stop after that.) Later I found out that the CDs aren't real mu

  • CNet mp3 search (Score:4, Funny)

    by Psychor ( 603391 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:06AM (#7473347) Homepage
    "Hi, welcome to the CNet mp3.com search!"

    "Sorry, your search under the categories 'independant artists' and 'mp3s' yielded no results... Did you mean you want to purchase Britney Spears WMAs?"

  • CNET have all the best domains! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:06AM (#7473348) Journal
    CNET have all the best domains!

    download.com
    news.com
    com.com
    mp3.com
    builder.com

    Any more anyone knows of? They must have damned good renewal services... maybe a million monkeys sitting at a million keyboards pressing the "buy domain" button on each of their sites?

  • MP3=!DRM (Score:4, Informative)

    by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore@@@gmail...com> on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:12AM (#7473387) Homepage Journal

    The expectation, of course, is that CNET will unveil their own online music store. But--how will they do this with MP3s? If they use some other format for the DRM, won't that make the domain name kind of ridiculous?

    "Go to MP3.com to spend a buck a piece on WMA!"?

  • YADMS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dusanv ( 256645 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:14AM (#7473397)
    Yet another download music service? I bet. After Apple, Dell, Napster, Microsoft (announced) and Walmart? It is getting crowded in that market really quickly!
    • Things were bound to heat up sooner or later. I'm still waiting for a legit, not a .RU, one to offer mainstream MP3s w/o DRM. Even though the odds are pretty slim, maybe Walmart given it's sheer size ($250B rev in 2002 vs. $28B rev for MS), can strong arm some DRM-less tunes?

      • I know why you said "mainstream" -- you didn't want anyone mentioning eMusic [emusic.com] on you. But seriously, why? I've been brainzing [musicbrainz.org] my collection lately; I have probably 14 gig of stuff from eMusic. And 80% of it is quite good.

        Incidentally, I seem to be sticking with eMusic, despite my earlier protests of their new plans. I'm downloading far less, but it's still worth the $10/month.

    • Obviously they were all waiting for Apple to do it so they could copy them ;)

  • Everything deleted? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blanks ( 108019 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:26AM (#7473474) Homepage Journal
    "until the site is redirected on December 2, 2003. Please note, however, that promptly following the removal of the MP3.com website, all content will be deleted from our servers and all previously submitted tapes, CD-ROMs and other media in our possession will be destroyed. We recommend that you make alternative content hosting arrangements as soon as practicable. "

    I guess theirs another player in the music distribution scene, but really, there going to piss off the people that matter the most, the people making the music.

    This will fail, and its because the hundreds of thousands of people who have accounts on mp3.com will not support them after this.

  • mp3.com in my view is doomed to become another Napster... Promising enhanced services ??? Yeah right.. We know what they have in mind: DRM crippled tunes, etc.

    I feel for all artists that have been using mp3.com over the years, trusting the service. And the service was great, at first, but recently declined in quality. Now it's all going down the drain :(

  • Is there any way to mass-download music from mp3.com? Seems rather a good idea now.
    • Right-click on "Listen to All Tracks: Hi-fi Play" for the artist you're interested in (actually listen to something first so they set the cookies and stuff - no need for a real e-mail address, I used one that bounces), save the .m3u file somewhere, and

      wget -i whatever.m3u

      or to preserve artist names as subdirectories (as I did, since they're not always very good at ID3-tagging their content)

      for f in *.m3u; do b=`echo $f | sed -e s,\\.m3u,,`; mkdir -p $b && ( cd $b && wget -i ../$b.m3u )
  • Up until they got sued for the "put the cd in the tray, authorize and listen to it anywhere" debacle (I thought was brilliant idea), MP3.com was a great website with a valuable service for indy/garage bands. Upload your music, someone buys a CD - MP3.com burns the CD and ships it to them with cover art and everything. They even included non-DRM MP3 files on the disc in a second session. Then the band gets half the sale. It's too bad they didn't stick with this model and decided to spend their seed money on

  • Just Business (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jeddak ( 12628 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @10:36AM (#7474001)
    I've had material on MP3.com for several years now. Never paid for the service, so I had less to lose than those that took the Gold Membership, etc. But I still don't understand the griping.
    The era of free multimedia serving is over. There's just too much overhead to justify providing that much free bandwidth.
    For those of you who bitching about MP3.com, just accept this unfortunate reality.

    Who's been screwed? OK, maybe the folks that signed up for Gold Membership. But it seems like it's pointless to bitch about what's happened - it's all just business.

    It's not the same as being ripped off by your producer [Beach Boys and countless others], or cheated out of payment by a venue after a performance [an ever-present risk in a business rife with unscrupulous people].

    There's always an element of risk, whatever endeavour you undertake. There's no guarantee that a party with whom you have entered into a contract and paid money for future services will not go out of business, or sell out to another party. That's just a fact of life.

    Fortunately, there are still plenty of free and low-cost music-hosting alternatives [sorry, I haven't checked ALL these links recently, but most should still be good. I am a lazy sod.]:


    AMP3.com [amp3.com]
    AmpCast [ampcast.com]
    Audiogalaxy [audiogalaxy.com]
    efolk [efolk.com]
    etree.org (SHN) [etree.org]
    Listen.com [listen.com]
    Lycos Music Search [lycos.com]
    MP3.com [mp3.com]
    nzmp3 [nzmp3.co.nz]
    peoplesound [peoplesound.com]
    SoundClick [soundclick.com]
    stationMP3 [stationmp3.com]
    gdlive.com [gdlive.com]
    FurtherNet [furthurnet.com]
    CD Baby [cdbaby.com]
    IUMA [iuma.com]
    BeSonic [besonic.com]
    My Local Bands [mylocalbands.com]
    SoundClick [soundclick.com]
    VITAMINIC [vitaminic.com]
    archive.org etree listing (SHN's) [archive.org]
    emusic [emusic.com]
    listensmart [listensmart.com]


    My music [verizon.net] (if you're curious, totally bored, and looking for something to listen to).

  • Back in the day when mp3.com still had their Payback for Playback promotion, my band made about $300. Not a lot of money, but when you're a band trying to pay for gear and studio time, anything is nice. AFAIC, mp3.com went don't the tubes when they killed the promotion.

    Filtering through all the crud was also a bitch.
  • while it lasted. I quit mine [mp3s.com] a while ago. Vivendi has adequately crippeled the service so much that this ending is the logical conclusion.

    It's a shame though. I got great music recommended mostly by the artists' themselves and the quality (to my tastes) was all but crappy. And that's where the controversy was: it showed that great music abunds. It is not scarce at all.

    And there you have the commonly held myth that we somehow need the music industry to "bring" or "make" that great new band. It's bollocks

  • This seems a bit scary: I post my music on open source/creative commons sites like Opsound or the Open Source Archive because of the licensing side. But this is always a fear with online hosting.

    From what I understand they are about to delete the entire music collection on mp3.com. I think this will be terrible - although I'm aware of most criticisms of the site.

    One thing they might do is keep the mp3s somehow (I doubt there's an open license on that stuff - I wonder if each recording is mp3.com's propert
  • Just a guess, but I believe there are still lawsuits pending against mp3.com from the my.mp3.com days. If CNet were to acquire the whole company, they would have taken on this liability.
  • This saddens me. I really do hope that CNet doesn't totally change the format of MP3.com, which is one of my favorite web sites on the internet. While the new layout does suck, and makes it harder to find the thousands and thousands of non-commercial bands, there is still a great amount of quality music on there. I think, by far, the most successful genre was electronic.

    I bought several CDs from the artists on the site and have found many many great artists. A number of fairly popular techno and trance art
  • mp3.com did have a couple of really good artists...and I bought about a dozen CDs off there from those artists before Vivendi took over.

    I really hope some of those artists can submit and head on over to Magnatune [magnatune.com] and get on board there.

    The download formats alone add enough value to buy stuff. (wav, flac, ogg, mp3 vbr, mp3 128) Not to mention I actually feel like I'm supporting the artist, which makes it all worthwhile.

  • Buying that domain doesn't sound very CNet-like to me...I would have thought they would just toss a new box on "mp3.com.com" :-P
  • I registered there several years ago, but wound up not using it too much. (One of these days I've GOT to get broadband.) Just a few weeks ago, the used-only-there, Sneakemail [sneakemail.com] address I gave them started getting beastality porn spam. Complaints as well as a snail-mail letter went unanswered.

    I figured a list of email addresses was snuck out by an employee, but now I have to wonder if there was some last minute, desperate attempt to raise funds.

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