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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."
It's not like the songs are being permanently eradicated anyway.
"What if the person put a lot of effort in using mp3.com to market their stuff?"
Then, hopefully that person has learned a valuable lesson about trusting a corporation without a contract. (You *can't*, ever).
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OK mp3.org is taken, but it seems to me, this is an ideal time for the artists to get together and start their own version of mp3.com, the way it was a couple of years ago, when it concentrated on making non-mainstream music available worldwide.
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.
on the front page of CNet is a feedback link. Not that Im naive enough to think 5 emails will do it, but a few hundred pointing out that they are alienating the very demographic they were concieved to serve might help a bit....CNet was started as a way to mainstream nerd-dom. Its not really a great resource now, but coporations always fear alienating customers to some extent. Only takes a second, and please be calm and articulate. Insults and ranting get ignored EVERYWHERE, not just here.
Vivendi, by destroying the music, is pretty much acknowledging that they have no legal right to do anything else with it.
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.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
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).
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 or ElectronicScene.com, that is their right to do. Artists could also sell CDs on CD Baby 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.
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Someone mod this troll down to where he belongs, please. The guy knows dick all about music and is clearly a bandwagon hopping wannabe. Yes, you. You are a wannabe. It's made clear by every word in your post. "I don't like/understand %GENRE%, it sukks!"
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.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.