MP3.com's Content to Be Destroyed 354
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."
their property, their decision (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not so sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Like Enrapture.
Re:I'm not so sure... (Score:3, Informative)
I'll just take a moment to plug ampedOut [ampedout.net], my favorite station. Tune in Friday nights for "Dopamine," which is their live show.
Re:their property, their decision (Score:4, Interesting)
"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?
Re:their property, their decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Vivendi Universal killing off hundreds of thousands of independent artists from commercial distribution... See the MS playbook on buying the competition so they can kill it. If the data is of no commercial interest to them, why would they not allow it's distribution on another forum? Because they want you to buy their product. "Good consumer, drink the kool-aide!"
Re:their property, their decision (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an artist on mp3.com, but hosting music there does not give exclusive rights. I can distribute it wherever I want. And they're not deleting "master recordings", per se, just mp3s which are the exact same as what I have on my hard disk.
I would, however, agree that they're making it excessively difficult to transfer the current library to somewhere else, though, and by buying out and then deleting the inventory of the largest independent mp3 distribution site, getting mighty close to anti-trust law infractions.
Re:their property, their decision (Score:4, Insightful)
Playing devil's advocate: "Your honor, we're not denying those artists their right to distribute their music, but there is no law saying we have to help them!"
Yes, buying up their medium for distributing music and sh!t-canning the archive would constitute 'not helping'... Bastards. I wished more companies competed on "quality of product" rather than on "size of market". Competing on anything other than "quality of product" is inherently dishonest.
Re:their property, their decision (Score:3, Informative)
I used to ask them once a month about it, and I'd get a standard response saying they'd answer my question in 4-6 business days. After a year of this, it switched t
*FLEX* Re:their property, their decision (Score:3, Insightful)
Library of Alexandria, meet mp3.com (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Library of Alexandria, meet mp3.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Library of Alexandria, meet mp3.com (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Library of Alexandria, meet mp3.com (Score:3, Interesting)
PRETENTIOUS ASSHOLE ALERT (Score:3, Insightful)
Your list of crappy bands is one that I generally agree with, excepting Soundgarden and STP. However, instead of merely saying you don't like their music, you go on to call them all talentless which simply isn't true.
Dave Matthews Band is full of talented musicians. Yes, they may not be your style, but in denying they have
Have you visited epitonic? (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite the same as mp3.com as it hosts mp3s of bands who are already signed, but I've found quite a few bands I'd never have heard of otherwise
Re:Library of Alexandria, meet mp3.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen goatboy, there is brilliant music in *every* genre. Yep, you heard it right. Even country! Hate Johnny Cash? Well damn, he influenced just about everyone you hear today and will continue to do so for, well, ever. Hate hip hop? Well damn, bands like Digable Planets and Tribe Called Quest influenced and inspired trip hop and downbeat, among about a million other things. Hate disco? Well, that's where your precious "high quality" trance came from. Hate Soundgarden, STP, etc? Guess what, if it weren't for the work they did, Dandy Warhols would have never had an audience. Let that one twist you all up inside, and then go do some reading and research on where the Dandies music really came from. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't Courtney.
The sad thing is that I can imagine you running around town, wearing your favorite DCD shirt, 4 days straight, going on about how you always liked them, even before 4AD, even before Gerrard did the Gladiator soundtrack. You are a fool, nothing more, and you completely missed the point of their music (and that of the Cocteau Twins).
I can't get over you listing the Dandy Warhols as excellent musicians. Are you mentally deficient? Amy (or Zia, or whatever you want to call her this month) plays a freaking KEYBOARD for basslines that she doesn't even write. And you call Dave Matthews talentless? Damn, you must be trolling.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bed with Music (Score:3, Funny)
delete! (Score:5, Funny)
rm -rf
*chug*
File sharing networks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:File sharing networks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:File sharing networks (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time to plug Fucked up shit [mp3.com]
... or IUMA (Score:3, Informative)
The Internet Underground Music Archive [iuma.org] has a similar concept to mp3.com... and they even predate mp3.com by several years.
I remember downloading a few .au files from them in early 1995.... on an SGI pizza box... ahhh nostalgia.
wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, hopefully that person has learned a valuable lesson about trusting a corporation without a contract. (You *can't*, ever).
Re:wow... (Score:2)
You got it.
Mergers and acquisitions are good for the companies involved. As the market is a zero-sum game whenever it is not creating something, that means someone else suffers loss of equal size. Usually, it's the customer. Sometimes, it's the competition.
Re:wow... (Score:2)
The government has already stepped in by instituting and enforcing transferable monopolies on the duplication and distribution of the contents of the archive.
If it weren't for this government activism, this whole story would be a non-issue. Maybe the question should be: "Shouldn't the government be able to step out?"
Re:wow... (Score:2)
So what ? What's the alternative ? Force mp3.com to host the files in perpetuity ?
What if K-Mart spent a lot of money marketing Martha Stewart products available at their store, and what if Martha Stewart somewhere down the line decides she doesn't want to sell to K-Mart anymore. Is that messed up ?
Sorry, but if someone's whole business plan depends on their files specifically being at MP3.com, then they needed to make provi
Get a grip (Score:2)
It seems as if mergers and acqusitions always have some negative effect on the customer.
Actually, I'd have to disagree with you. Ultimately, this particular merger is going to have a negative effect on the shareholders of whoever is buying MP3.com. After all, they're the one's losing money at the hands of somebody else's poor decision making. You (or any other consumer, for that matter) can form a corporation for about $100, throw up a web site for about another $100 a month, and with a little
Re:wow... (Score:2)
This is bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Jane Average Rockerchick is currently on a 10 city tour of small venues. It's just her, her drummer, her bassist and the hypothetical band Skoda.
She built this tour on the basis of her fan community, which she built up on her mp3.com site. She doesn't have a recording deal. She hasn't checked her email in 3 weeks. She's just about ran out of the CDs she brought with her to sell for gas money. She wants to go to a cybercaf to order a few to be delivered to the next town she'll be in.
It's December 4th. She's screwed.
She emails mp3.com to find out what happened to her music. They send a form letter reply saying they zapped it, sorry, thank you for your patronage.
She calls home to see if her producer can burn her a few from his masters, but his basement studio got flooded last night because the idiot landlord didn't put in proper drainage. Her masters are pooched. She was going to meet a record weasel in Cleveland. Guess that's out.
Just another great recording artist you never heard of. She blew her savings on this tour. Guess she'll go back to waiting tables.
Re:This is bad. (Score:5, Funny)
JFC, you blithering assmaster.
Re:This is bad. (Score:2)
Re:This is bad. (Score:2)
Re:This is bad. (Score:2)
As has been pointed out by someone else, the parent's scenario is extremely far-fetched. But moreover, even if it came to pass, in the absence of a binding contract between MP3 and Jane Rockchick that promises service for some period of time, anything that happens after MP3.com terminates its service is not their fault.
What if I upload a fie - say GreatAmericanNovel.doc - to my ISP, they go out of business while I'm out
Not enough (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This is bad. (Score:2)
They are fictionous entertainanment, not documentaries.
Re:This is bad. (Score:4, Funny)
destroying what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:destroying what? (Score:2, Interesting)
A shame.. (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, I'm sure it was good for them too; I've heard music I first found on mp3.com make its way onto TV shows.
Oh well.
There ARE other "hippie" options for music (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, what I really wanted to scribe here is that iRATE [sourceforge.net] is an amazing new program. You can learn and meet new artists through their music, and it's entirely Free as in an STD (-;
I recently found that after being disappointed with MP3.com, and I must say that I love it so much that I had a dream about it last night that I would wake up and only have the damn OMNIMEDIA radio crap stations playing Pinkin Lark and crap like that (which encourages violence, mind you).
Again, please support iRATE -- it's SourceForge code, it's Open-Source (~95%), it's made by Americans and Europeans, and it's really cool and a great replacement for MP3.com.
Re:There ARE other "hippie" options for music (Score:2, Funny)
Encourages violence? Encourages violence? That's a bunch of pinko-liberal hippie bullshit.
Man, IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!!!1!!!
if you're a true hippie (Score:3, Informative)
Re:if you're a true hippie (Score:2, Insightful)
iRATE won't help (Score:3, Informative)
$ cat trackdatabase.xml | perl -pe 's/></>\n</g' | wc -l
140
$ cat trackdatabase.xml | perl -pe 's/></>\n</g' | fgrep mp3.com | wc -l
37
So, 26% of the tracks I have on iRATE came from mp3.com
Re:There ARE other "hippie" options for music (Score:2)
How do you get that for free?? She always charges me.
If he really cared... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a feeling he is a crybaby that only cares for his own (good?) name and his reputation...
He found selling mp3.com more important back then than retaining the songs for archive...
He is like all the other managers of businesses...
Not to be trusted that is...
Re:If he really cared... (Score:2)
I'm no robertson lover, but running a business is a very hard thing to do. No one likes creating a money maker and then selling it off just for the cash. They'd rather make MORE money.
Re:If he really cared... (Score:2)
At what cost? By his own judgement, he felt it best to sell the company obviously. If it were lucrative, he would have kept it, eh?
He's not a saint. No one is. We all have our best interests at heart. Unless he was doing it as a charity, I wouldn't dismiss the idea o
Re:If he really cared... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps he just didn't expect Vivendi Universal to be completely insane and wasteful
He found selling mp3.com more important back then than retaining the songs for archive..
He was under attack from all the major labels and the RIAA at the time; he might have just figured that the only way mp3.com could survive was to be reborn under the care one of those major labels. Playi
Hmmm.... (Score:4, Informative)
Chris
Stay of execution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems everyone is doing that for old building etc - why should independent music be exempt from that ideal?
Conspiracy theory begin here: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Conspiracy theory begin here: (Score:2)
1nad1 Internet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Conspiracy theory begin here: (Score:3, Insightful)
Noone's stopping these guys from distributing their content somewhere else. Please. If Vivendi is snuffing out a need that is so desperately there, and if the independent music scene is as important as people sometimes seem to think, someone else will sprout up to service it. Barriers to entry here are pretty small.
Though personally, I think it would be in Vivendi's interest to KEEP their fingers on the indie pulse by controlling MP3.com
Re:Conspiracy theory begin here: (Score:2)
Freenet (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Freenet (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not true (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Music industry showing their hand (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
They don't give a fuck about artists (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This is true. It also shows that Vivendi and all the other freedom-hating RIAA and MPAA filth are lying when they say their support of DRM is to help artists make a living. They don't give a fuck about artists, or anything except their own pockets.
(If they have made sany such arguments in a court of law, they should be charged with contempt of court and/or perjury, and should be sentenced to the maximum time in prison that the law allows).
crawler? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:crawler? (Score:2)
Still not totally unreasonable, but you only have about a week to pull down over 6 TB according to your math.
Why destroyed. (Score:3, Insightful)
What assets were not.
If they did not purchase the music, or the copyright to the music archive someone could simply copy it.
Alternatively if the mp3.com business model worked, why not just start up another. If it didn't work, it should die anyway.
mp3.org? (Score:5, Insightful)
The artists should get together, chip in a few dollars/euros each and buy the material back, start their own website. The material is being destroyed anyway, so Vivendi shouldn't have too much of a problem selling it back to the authors.
The only problem is the notice is so short. But if the artists don't get together and do it now, another "entrepeneur" will buy the material for cheap and screw it up even more.
Re:mp3.org? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:mp3.org? (Score:2)
I have have the IMO the best of the following genres:
alternative
electronic
irish
latin
rock-pop
synthpop
techno
trance
I'll probably put it in a more browseable fashion when I get more bandwidth at some point. There are a lot of other people out there that are hosting this stuff on p2p as well, as I run into it
MP3.com Must Be Destroyed (Score:2)
That makes sense to me
But I doubt it, I won't allow it
Because I run the scene
They always fake it, too bad they made it
It's not a problem to me
They're really smart but they ain't got no heart
They make my asshole bleed!
So very negative
They only take and they never give
I scream into the night
MP3.com must be destroyed!
They are nothing, I'm for real
I heard they run the media
Tearing down what others build
I deserve some respect for my clas
contact CNet and let them know (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:contact CNet and let them know (Score:2)
.coms (Score:2, Insightful)
Is archive.org willing? (Score:2, Insightful)
I propose this: instead of downloading files, why don't we round up the e-mail addresses of all the artists on MP3.com we can find, and e-mail them before the site is taken down? We ask each of them if they would be willing to upload their files to archive.com, and then work with the IA to create a way to preserve them like at the Live Music Archive.
It's such a valuable resource, and
Sad (Score:2)
Has anyone started a non-profit... (Score:2)
Re:Has anyone started a non-profit... (Score:4, Informative)
They're destroying COPIES of songs... (Score:2)
This is actually a GOOD and RESPONSIBLE thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time there was a nifty place called amp3.com -- they tagged commercials on the beginning of any songs you uploaded and gave the artist 5 cents per download. They got into a legal dispute with their ISP, who took all their servers offline.
Unfortunately, ISP would not allow the *artists* to get their music off the servers -- the ISP had hijacked the music of a thousand musicians (and wouldnt' give it back -- because the music was, after all, the draw at amp3.com).
Vivendi is buying MP3.com -- ok -- and they are apparently not interested in going the same route mp3.com did. SO what will they do?
They SHOULDN'T do what michael robertson is asking, and give the mp3s to the internet archive -- that's not Vivendi's call to make, and MP3.com didn't really have the right to do that based on the agreements the musicians signed up for.
So Vivendi is being responsible, as far as I can tell, by respecting the authorship and copyright of the musicians who have uploaded their music. They're guaranteeing to the artists that their mp3's wont wind up being used in a way that WASN'T AGREED TO ON THE ARTIST AGREEMENT FOR MP3.COM.
Personally, and this is kind of sad, but I would tend to trust Vivendi more than Michael Robertson, who has proven himself over and over again to be nothing more than a mercenary opportunist who is, to quote from high-brow literature, all about the benjamins, baby.
Re:This is actually a GOOD and RESPONSIBLE thing (Score:2)
The question is, though, what are these artists going to do now? With MP3.com gone, where will they release their music?
Re:This is actually a GOOD and RESPONSIBLE thing (Score:2)
No need to delete. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
What else can they do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless the license the artists agreed to was so broad and open that it WOULD allow this Vivendi is probably (gasp) doing the RIGHT thing as wrong as it may seem to be.
Last Chance To Download! (Score:2)
But to stay ontopic, uh, I'm sure every artist, like ourselves, has their music served on numerous sites. So why does anyone care if the copies that are on mp3.com are erased?
What about the public library? (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, music is by some extent the essence of who we are as a civilisation. It should be preserved. Not chucked into the dumpster.
Artists Should Fight "Censorship" (Score:2)
Wasn't Alanis Morissette a part owner of MP3.com? If some high profile artists were to kick up a fuss, say under the banner of "corporate censorship", I think CNet would an about face pretty quickly.
Destroying the phone book, not the numbers. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's keep this in mind, folks -- the music itself is not being destroyed, just this directory of it. The artists themselves maintain the rights to their creations, and if they want to upload them somewhere else, such as Ampcast [ampcast.com] or ElectronicScene.com [electronicscene.com], that is their right to do. Artists could also sell CDs on CD Baby [cdbaby.com] or just upload their MP3s to their own web sites, provided it's cool with the ISP. Perhaps it won't be concentrated in one place like before, but life will go on.
Also, keep in mind that we don't know exactly what C|Net is going to do with the mp3.com domain yet. It may reboot the service and make it look similar to the pre-IPO days. That might not be such a terrible thing. That catalog had a lot of clutter.
As for Michael Robertson, I would ignore him. He was the one who said that MP3.com was a data company and not a music company. He's a lucky opportunist who doesn't really care about artist rights, and as a former artist on MP3.com, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him [permanent4.com].
Transition to iTunes? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Bullshit, MP3.com has some good stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, I don't blame the RIAA, I blame Michael Robertson for deciding that the legal artists he had weren't good enough, and for starting up some shit that he very well KNEW was illegal, damn all his high ethics, his high ethics killed what could have been "the next big thing" in music.
This is REALLY a damn shame (Score:3, Interesting)
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].
Yes, ampfea.org does it right. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Purge the Drives Capt'n! (Score:2)
Re:Dupe of last week (Score:2)
mp3.com Acquired by CNet Posted by CmdrTaco [cmdrtaco.net] on Friday November 14, @09:43PM
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 [mp3.com], CNet has acquir
Re:Permission needed? I don't think so. (Score:2)
Yeah, filthy karma whore repost of parent, but the mods don't browse at -1 like they're supposed to, so this will never be seen otherwise. I'm prolly at the cap anyway.
Re:This is going too far. (Score:2)
You're as bad as the people who think piracy is theft. Similarly, deleting specific instances of songs is not deleting art, it's destroying an instance or shall we say occurrence of the song.
It's not like this music sprang into being spontaneously on mp3.com. It came from somewhere, and it can come from there again. Any artists who have counted on mp3.com to archive their music in perpetuity are, quite frankly, too stupid to live.
Re:This is going too far. (Score:2)
Re:This is going too far. (Score:2)
Re:Petition? (Score:2)
Did you know Vivendi is going to destroy the contents of mp3.com unless we can get enough people to protest? Please forward this email to all the people in your address book. This is not a joke. Bill Gates is really giving... er... WE can really convince them to preserve the music.