MP3.com = MP3.gone

MP3.com = MP3.gone

Vivendi Universal has sold the mp3.com domain name to C|net. But apparently they didn’t sell the content. Instead they are going to simply delete the over a million songs posted there by over 250,000 (mostly independent) artists. Sad.

MP3.com founder and former owner Michael Robertson shares his thoughts about it in an open letter. Including some very interesting information about the history of the service:

Along the way, MP3.com faced ups and downs in the business realm and the courthouse, but eventually was purchased by the largest music company in the world, Vivendi Universal. Last week, VU announced the sale of MP3.com to Cnet. Conspiracists have publicly said that VU’s intention all along was simply to shut down MP3.com, erasing the MP3 format and the digital collection of artists’ work; that’s complete nonsense. You don’t spend nearly $400 million on property you intend to destroy. In fact, VU deployed the technology and people from MP3.com throughout their media empire. VU now uses a customer tracking system across its media properties to manage email campaigns and profile music listeners in a scientific way. They took the digital publishing engine MP3.com perfected, and now have the most advanced digital publishing architecture in the world. Music goes from the recording studio directly into a digital library, where it can be sent to the CD pressing plant, music subscription systems, publishing libraries, and much more — all digitally and precisely tracked. VU also took the my.mp3 subscription system and used it as the foundation of the Pressplay, which became the recently launched Napster 2.0 music subscription system.

December 3rd is the cut of date. So if there is anything you like on MP3.com, you’ve got 13days to get it downloaded.

Xian 12:14 AM, 11.22.03 - p-link