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Mp3.com sold that technology to a company still in business called Trusonic. It is great technology.

Robertson doesn't get his due as good tech mind. Well, maybe it wasn't all his idea, but MP3.com had good tech minds.

I'm still wondering if there's a way for a band that has disbanded (heh) to put its material back on garageband.com. I'm particularly interested in a bluegrass group called Big Twang -- for details, see my mirror of their now-defunct site. They had three songs at mp3.com, but since the band was gone by December 19, 2003, I guess there's no way to get their account back.

Of course, the .mp3's are safe... on my hard drive. Don't tell the lawyers!

Trusonic FAQ
4a. I was told that my music was going to be deleted after the sale of MP3.com. What happened?
Trusonic has the audio files of songs upload to www.mp3.com, but only if those songs were enrolled in the Trusonic Music Program as of December 19, 2003. Trusonic does not have access to songs that were not enrolled in the Trusonic Music Program.

Ah, ok. I was misunderstanding their concept of playlists.

So there exists the possibility that they have our music in their system, but it is not included in their playlists, and there is no way for us to know that it is in their system unless they decide to include it in their playlists.

Yeah, that makes me kind of angry. I went ahead an opted out explicitly.

So I found their Opt-Out page. My band had music on there way back when, so I put in the email addy and password, told it to opt-out, and submitted it.

"Thank you for considering truSONIC, Your request has been recorded."

Only I'm pretty sure I typed the password wrong. So I typed in gibberish for the account name and password. And I get the same message. What's up with that?

If you follow the story link, you will find former mp3.com artists can request their music be removed from the TruSonic program by visiting this link.

...sell them as piped music to hotels, restaurants and other businesses, passing on royalties along the way.

Passing on royalties? All the The Register article says about royalties is:

Artists who created the 1.5 million song archive have already expressed some disquiet about royalties. TruSonic has a very limited pool for the 250,000 artists, based on the number of plays, but has said it may re-evaluate this.

The TruSonic FAQ says:

How do artists benefit?
The main benefit for artists whose music is used in this program is increased public exposure to listeners who might not otherwise hear that music. An additional benefit is the royalties earned should your song be included in one or more playlists.

It's been repeated many times here and elsewhere, musicians do not make money from royalties, they make money from gigs. Because of the way their contracts are written, all expenses of production, distribution, advertising etc are deducted, usually leaving Zero. The only benefit of signing a recording contract is exposure (fame). TruSonic acknowledges this (sort of) in their FAQ.

I was an MP3.com artist and for obvious reasons wanted to opt out. Here's the link.

I don't see what the problem is ... a) if they play your music, you will get paid b) if you want out, you can get out

I don't see what the problem is ... a) if they play your music, you will get paid b) if you want out, you can get out