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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."
Go ahead and destroy them.
250,000 songs - and not a single one was worth listening to.
Waste of drive space, I say.
mp3.com Acquired by CNet
Posted by CmdrTaco 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, 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"."
What's music to one person is just noise to someone else. I've quite enjoyed the independent aritsts that have been able to gain exposure through MP3.com. On the other hand there is a WHOLE LOT of crap that is on the radio and MTV every since the mid nineties:
...you get my drift. I HATE all of the artists listed above as I feel they are completely talentless and the only thing they have going for them is popularity. Oddly enough, one of the most profound comments I've ever heard from anyone in the music business came out of none other than schlockmeister himself, Huey Lewis. He said that when he found out "The News" (his band for you children on Slashdot who don't remember the 80s) had a hit single, he said he was a little disappointed. When someone asked him why, he said that he knew that popular doesn't always mean good (as in good music). He was sooo right.
1. Limp Bizkit
2. Kidd Rock
3. X-tina
4. Shitney Spears
5. Dave Matthew's Band
6. Korn
7. Shania Twain
8. Sisqo
9. Soundgarden
10. Stone Temple Pilots
There are plenty of artists out there who are excellent musicians but that most of the world (except for real artists) are unaware of. Musicians who HAVE a following but are not popular:
1. Ryuichi Sakamoto
2. David Sylvian
3. Jarboe
4. The Cocteau Twins
5. The Dandy Warhols
6. Dead Can Dance
7. Up until recently in the states... Kylie Minogue (she's bigger than Madonna the world over)
8. Slowdive
9. The Catherine Wheel
10. Muse
I suppose some of my anger regarding that state of music is that I live in one of the bigger cities in the US that considers itself a traditional "Rock and Roll" town. So, the radio stations here suck. There's no "alternative" radio anymore. We used to have one of those prepackaged "The End" type of stations, but they shut it down and replaced it with hip-hop crap. We now have a REALLY shitty "Extreme" format station that plays tons of grunge from the 90s and grindcore shit. There is absolutely no presence for the electonica demographic here on the radio outside of a few college radio shows. It's totally depressing. I imagine that somewhere in the US there's got to be radio stations that play trance or some other high quality electronic music. Hell... I'd be happy if I even heard a little Alice DeeJay or David Gahan (considering how "poppy" those two artists are compared to most of what I listen to). So far my saving grace has been the internet with independent artist and radio streams of some of the best music (all from Europe and the UK).
But as I stated earlier, I KNOW that some of you out there have totally opposing views. Some of you like homogenized hip-hop because it makes you part of the crowd. Some of you enjoy grindcore because it expresses your "rebelious" nature. Some of you even like X-tina and Shitney because you like to "party". (Yuck. If there is something that pisses me off more it's folks who think shit like that is "party music". Yeah, and pass the low quality beers too.) But there is one difference, (this semi-rant excluded) in general, I just smile and tolerate the rest of you. I don't go barking out how awful your taste is or that NO ONE wants to listen to shit that you like. So... to the parent of my reply... YOU should get a fucking grip and realize that not everyone shares your shitty musical taste. I don't even know what you like, but I'm willing to bet you like prepackaged shit that you can buy at WalMart or Amazon.
Un-news
I was with you until you said Soundgarden is crap. What's with you man? Putting Soundgarden and Britney Spears in the same category?!?!?
You guys must love to smoke a lot of grass. 1. Vivendi is not the only label in the world. 2. The independant artists don't represent a label. 3. Therefore, Vivendi, by deleting these songs is not attempting to put another company out of business or restrict their capabilities in any way. They're just indie artists; not EMI. 4. The artists still have their damn songs and can distribute them as they please. 5. Vivendi is under no obligation to spend their money and resources distributing a bunch of gay ass songs by queers.
I am an artist that has used MP3.com for 4 years to distribute the music that my band records. Back in the heyday, we even made several hundred dollars from people downloading our stuff as several of our songs were in the top 40 grunge chart.
MP3.com was a really cool service.
Still - why the hell would we want the content to be preserved? I don't want copies of my music floating around in some other record company's vault. They're doing the smart thing by destroying the music, otherwise, they could be accused for ripping off the most popular bands on MP3.com.
With today's web hosting market, bandwidth is cheap enough for bands to afford to distribute their music themselves, and if anybody is reading this and needs space for their band, my company (Cerebral Tech, Inc) will host you with no strings for ten bucks a month, just send me an email.
Just because a big record company is behind this doesn't mean its wrong - they're actually doing something that benefits us artists in the long run.
$45 per U Colocation Special