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MP3.com Archive Not Lost (1.7 Million Songs Saved)
macdaddypunk writes "We all remember last December's grim news: MP3.com closed its doors, warning thousands of musicians that 'all your content will be deleted from our servers.' However, as the Wall Street Journal reports today, most of the original MP3.com archive was never deleted! Two companies, GarageBand and Trusonic, claiming to have a legitimate copy of the archive, are now enabling former MP3.com artists to visit www.MP3isBack.com and recover their MP3.com music, instantly re-generating their artist pages with just a few clicks. Trusonic, itself a Vivendi spin-out, focuses on licensing music to retailers for in-store airplay. GarageBand, like a HOTorNOT for music, offers free mp3 downloads and claims to host the definitive charts of independent music."
The Promised Land
The premise: nerds engaging in theoretical, philosophical combat concerning their favorate comic book characters. Such a collection of easily baitable marks have not existed since the advent of Slashdot.
Our time is now. Aspire to greatness.
OS X is closed source. This means that it is the work of the devil - its purpose is to make the end users eat babies.
Linux is the only free OS. Yes the BSD lincenses may appear more free, but as they have no restrictions, they are actually less free than the GPL. You see, restricting the end user more actually makes them more free than not putting restrictions on them. You must be a dumb luser for not understanding this.
And you obviously dont have a real job. A real job involves being a student or professional academic. You see, academics are the ones who know all about productivity - if you work for a commercial organisation you obviously do not know anything about computers. Usability is stupid. Whats wrong with the command line? If you cant use the command line then you shouldnt be using a computer. vi should be the standard word processor - you are such a luser if you want to use Word. Installing software should have to involve recompiling the kernel of the OS. If you dont know how to do this, you are a stupid luser who should RTFM. Or go to a Linux irc channel or newsgroup. After all, they are soooo friendly. If you dont know how the latest 2.6 kernel scheduling algorithm works then they will tell you to stop wasting their time, but they really are quite supportive.
Oh, and M$ is just as evil as Apple. Take LookOUT for instance. You could just as easily use Eudora. Who needs groupware anyway, a simple email client should be all we use (thats all we use as academics, why cant businesses be any different).
And trend setters - Linux is the trend setter. It may appear KDE is a ripoff from XP, but thats because M$ stole the KDE code. We all know they have GPL'ed code hidden in there somewhere (but not the things that dont work, only the things that work could possibly have GPL'ed code in it).
And Apple is the suxor because they charge people for their product. We all know that its a much better business model to give all your products away for free. If you charge for anything, then you are allied with M$ and will burn in hell.
Is this just a temporary solution or will this
.
last forever? Perhaps I should RTFA...
--
...that all your content is not belong to /dev/null? Sweet.
http://www.harmful.org/homedespot/newtdr/NEWtdrARC HIVE/cosplay/charafestarchive.htm
.. it was like, 'wow, you're hitler too?? top of the morning to ya!!' they were so happy!! all taking each other's pictures and shit. . . then they got their picture taken ALL TOGETHER, with A STUFFED PANDA THROWN IN FOR NO REASON. i did not manage to capture this on film so i will now kill myself."
(halfway down the page) "the BEST MOMENT OF THE WHOLE CONVENTION was when the 2 roving bands of Hitlers happened to run into each other.
And one for the road.
http://www.comics.aha.ru/rus/stalin/1.html
rusty foster is a gay faggot-ass queer cock-smoking cyum-felching homo and his wife is a man
God damnit, I wanted First Post for 4/20 (well, not quite) just to highlight the issues brought up by my troll. I am the Conor Collins Troll, dedicated to the destruction of Conor Collins and all that he stands for. I also believe that *BSD is dying, you guys should pay your $699 Liscensing fee to SCO and that I'm so 1337 that you can't handle it. I am before my time, my greatness shall be revered forever.
This just goes to support theory that once you put something on the internet, it exists forever.
While most of the music loaded up there was utter crap, the few gems that were hidden among the dross really made the service worth it.
I'm glad someone was able to save the data, this will definitely make retrieving the files easier for everyone.
I have been pwned because my
I'm surprised and pleased to hear that all those tunes didn't go swirling down the bowl, after all. Nice job. It's akin to a musical violation of Conservation of Energy!
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
3...2...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
http://archive.org has an entire section for music. And archive.org is composed of librarian/historian types, not questionable-business-model e-biz types (ie MP3.com). Their mission is to make sure digital things do not get lost. And they could certainly take several TB of additional data, since their archive grows at a ridiculous rate as it is.
Furthermore, the songs could be licensed any way the artist wants- from public-domain to super duper copyrighted with a http://creativecommons.org license.
http://reeddavid.com
The thought that the archive was not entirely lost is a nice one, but it sounds like they only saved the music in MP3 form. Is there any place like mp3.com was but with FLAC/SHN encoded files so that I can hear the music the way it was written?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I smell a lawsuit from the MP3.com Domain owners who think this could be a "trademark infringement." Maybe I'm just lawsuit paranoid, but it just seems so likely that these people are going to be handed a nice subpoena...
I mean, come on - one single writable CD can hold a hundred or so songs. How hard would it be for even the most prolific band to keep a copy of everything they submitted to MP3.com.
Ok, so I don't keep everything I post to usenet, or slashdot, but only because the work to recreate them is rarely worth the effort. If you've spent enough effort to get a decent quality recording, there's no way you'd even keep the MP3 as the master copy, but hey - more power to those who didn't care enough.
The songs that TruSonic/GarageBand have are only the ones that were included in TruSonic's broadcasting program. If you didn't opt-in, your songs are gone (or at least, TruSonic just doesn't have them). Also, it was already known a while ago that TruSonic still had these songs, it's just that now the authors are able to access them again.
or can you retrieve all your original work and then store it somewhere cheaper? like http://music.download.com/
the Slashbot is the weakest new troll on the market daddy-o. Straight gay son.
Big ups trollkore, how you living my brothers?
I'd like to congratulate the author of this snippet on their ability to work in a link to HOT or NOT.
HOT or NOT on slashdot. I never thought I'd see the day...
The space unintentionally left unblank.
On the other hand, these MP3's are a little out of date. One of the nicer things about independent, free music is that its brand spanking new, usually. This archive is old. Maybe that doesn't matter to some people, but even music a year old to me sounds "old", if you know what I mean. You can definitely tell 80's music from 90's music. There are subtle changes year to year. Some people can pick up on these differences, and these people won't be satisfied with the archive.
So, to summarize, seek out the new independent music, wherever it may be.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
in a nutshell.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
As a recording artist, I have a lot of friends who were directly impacted by this whole thing. In fact, a friend of a friend lost an entire album worth of his stuff when his hard drive crapped out a couple weeks after MP3.com closed down and supposedly deleted all the music. I suppose he might be able to recover his old recordings now, but of course with all the attendent red tape, it will be an uphill battle. With all the copyright issues and flipflopping, you can never tell where you stand as an artist. One minute you have a deal, the next minute they screw you. This is just another example. More than anything else, we need consistent, principled application of copyright policy, not companies who "deleted it before they decided to keep it" or whatever's going on here.
This transfer process requires that your browser accepts cookies.
Please enable cookies, back up a page, and try again.
He tried that one, but when Slashdot emailed the username back it was, 'Hey Ma! Look at Me - I'.
PureVolume.com is a much better alternative to garageband and mp3.com. What I like most is how simple and clean each bands interface is. Check it out! http://www.purevolume.com
Also, many of the artists on purevolume have, or had started with mp3.com.
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
Here's a mirror
Some great no-name artists work were saved.
Good news.
Sounds like a decent offer for artists. Their service sounds rather good, and it's a decent offer (3 songs for free). And unlike P2P, it provides promotion capabilties essentially allowing people to keep track of a band they are interested in.
P2P is just hosting. People still need to find it, and figure out where to find more about the band.
This looks like a decent service. I could see some small bands with websites linking to their page on the service. A good way to organize your bands online promotional info and let fans keep up to date.
I'd personally rotate the songs every so often (if they allow that, which I think they do). Let people keep coming back to hear new songs.
Just my $0.02. It looks like a decent site. I hope some bands will make good use of it.
Other than the few people who are signed but still have files available (Armchair Martian) who is worth listening to?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
have high-quality master backups of their recordings? At the very least, CD quality, but probably a higher-quality multitrack thing? I can't imagine a band actually losing access to their recorded work because of MP3.com's shutdown.
The value isn't backup, but the hosting and marketing value.
Mp3.com is a pretty easy domain to remember, and it seem like the natural place to look for music. So it was commonly known and got a lot of hits. Popular, corporate-sponsored artists were also featured, so as a nobody you were at least on the same website as somebody. Therefore it was one of the best places to host your content.
What good is having your music online somewhere if no one knows who you are? MP3.com provided a place artists could at least have a foothold. if you were on MP3.com, you may have been nobody, but you were somewhere and you had a shot at being found. Without the hot domain, you really are, to millions of consumers, nobody.
Umm, GarageBand? Isn't that an Apple trademark? Of course, they did register the domain long before (1999) Apple released their product of the same name (2004). Anyone smell a lawsuit coming up?
I can't imagine that they were saved with only a few clicks.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Well, yes. But you have to pass it through a couple of filters, auto-pitch-tune it and slap a barely dressed teenager into a film clip.
;)
LoL! Good one
reeddavid.com has nothing to do with archive.org or MP3.com!!!!
It's come to my attention that people are always complaining about not being able to find their files on most OSes. But Unix seems to confound people to no end, which makes absolutely no sense since it is VERY WELL logically structured. Unlike Windows which is just a fucking mess. The Unix philosophy behind filing your data is all about standard locations for the different types of programs, configs and data you might have on your systems. If adhered to, you can go to any Unix system and easily locate files. However, I will argue that it needs some reorganizing for today's applications. And NO "My Documents" is a stupid fucking idea for morons with the intelligence of a slime mold!!! That will NEVER happen on any systems I administer. So now, I give you how I lay out my systems these days:
First level designations in a path:
00 in the first level of the path is the root user's personal directory
01 in the first level of the path is the designation for the "applications" directory
02 in the first level of the path is the "documents" directory
03 in the first level of the path is the "users" directory (equivalent to the stupid "home" designation used by troglodytes)
Note: in directories of type 03 in the first level of the path, the second directory is just the user's id number
Second level designations in a path:
01 in the second level of the path is always the "OpenOffice.org" application directory
02 in the second level of the path is always the "Mozilla" application director
01a in the second level of the path is always "Textual" documents
/01/01 - Open Office.org resides here.
/01/02 - Mozilla resides here
/02-00/01a/ - root's textual docs live here
/02/01a/01 - the first user's textual docs live here
/02/01a/02 - the second user's textual docs live here
/00/mbox - root's mail is here
/03/500/mbox - the first user's mail is here
/03/501/mbox - the second user's mail is here
This is a much easier setup once you get used to it as it makes it VERY easy to find stuff. It also makes scripting possible for searching for files and working with files in a character based setting. I don't allow my users to use anything other than three character numeric file names. I haven't heard a word out of them since I implemented this system. In general, they seem to be pleased since they no longer have to think hard about where their docs are. The docs are always within easy reach, and as an operator, my life has become considerably easier. More time to play Nethack... So get it though your heads you fucking idiots!!! Long file names based on alpha characters are nothing but a big pain in the ass. Get used to the coming paradigm of numeric filenames. It's WAY easier. Fucking idiot amateurs.
A Bastard Operator from Clevo
that link is broken
course not... it's in the Google cache dummy!
What's better: MP3 streaming or Ogg Vorbis streaming?
(I find whatsbetter?com more fun than hotornot.com.)
Apple licensed the name from Garageband.com. No lawsuit. Don't worry.
MP3's and they aint yours.
Suck it. Suck it hard.
I must be New Here
would've linked to this
harmonious design
we're back. http://www.garageband.com/artist/CaWiWh
Because there were at least five or ten good songs in that archive!
The CB App. What's your 20?
anyone got a bittorrent?
That site seems pretty cool but I really like garageband's genres. I used to spend a good chunk of time reviewing the electronic music and found a number of truly great songs. Unfortunately, I cannot use their service anymore because of some formating issues with RealOne player on the Mac. I just get an error cryptically citing"dnet." Their forums offered no clue the last time i checked. Anyone who can help resolve this problem will receive good karma (figuratively speaking : )
harmonious design
...keeps .mp3s as his only copy of their music and ditched the master recording they were ripped from?
before Slashdot got to it.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
This dude kept his precious "art" on a hard drive (which WILL crap out eventually) and didn't bother keeping non-magnetic copies (i.e. CDs)?
What happened to personal responsibility? Oh, I forgot, he's probably an American.
click here
I'm waiting for the MPAA and MP3.COM to sue these 'pirates' for making independant musicians' music available to themselves.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Just FYI. I hit stop when the title said something about the GNAA and anuses...
TERMS & CONDITIONS: What am I committing to?
For every song you host with GarageBand.com, you must agree to the contract below. It probably looks scarier than it really is, but please read through the whole thing. The key points are:
You confirm that you own the music you're uploading and that it obeys all content laws (e.g. it's not pornographic), that it contains no viruses, and that you're not a minor.
You grant us non-exclusive permission to use this music however we see fit (as part of a marketing promotion, for example)
Rest assured, however, that we're not going to sell your music (unless, of course, you decide to sign a recording or licensing contract with us).
Please, have your attorney check this out. We're sure you'll find it's fair and surprisingly chilled out. Here's the whole enchilada:
GARAGEBAND.COM INTERNET MUSIC HOSTING AGREEMENT
We have attempted to outline below in straightforward English the terms you agree to when you host your music at www.GarageBand.com ("GBC"). Please be aware that these terms if accepted by you, create a binding legal agreement between you and GBC which affects your rights. We strongly urge that before accepting these terms you print out a copy and review it with your attorney, manager and other representatives and if you have no such representatives that you seek other independent qualified guidance. We reserve the right to make changes to the Internet Music Hosting Agreement in the future, although these changes would not apply to you unless you accepted the revised terms.
The basic submissions terms which will constitute our agreement if you accept by clicking the "I ACCEPT" box or submit any material to GBC are as follows:
1. GBC Rights.
Any sound recordings, musical and/or vocal works, pictures, videos, song lyrics and/or other materials (collectively the "Material") submitted by you shall be available for us to use on a non-exclusive basis anywhere and everywhere throughout the universe without any payment to you. We will not sell or license your music to others (making your music available to visitors of our site shall not be considered a sale or license), but GBC will be authorized to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform,
publicly display and digitally perform and/or distribute the Material in whole or in part, alone or together with other material. GBC shall also have the right to use the Material for the
purpose of promoting GBC products and services and to use the name, likeness and biographical material and any logos, marks or trade names of you or any individuals performing or otherwise represented in the Material or the artist or
band included or referred to in the Material without any payment to you or any other persons or companies.
2. Ownership of Materials.
At all times you shall retain full ownership of the Material while granting to GBC the following non-exclusive rights: By accepting
this agreement and/or submitting any Material, you are guaranteeing to GBC that you are of legal age to enter into contracts (you're not a minor) and have all rights, approvals and/or consents necessary to submit the Material on the terms provided herein. You also guarantee that no permission is required from any other individual or company for us to use the Material and other rights provided herein. You further guarantee
to GBC that the compositions, recordings, lyrics and other materials contained in the Material are original, created only by you and do not contain any "samples" or excerpts from
the material of others and do not otherwise infringe on the rights of any other individuals or companies. Although we're big believers in free expression, you also guarantee that the
Material does not and will not violate any laws or be defamatory, libelous, pornographic or obscene. Finally, you guarantee to GBC that the Material will not contain any "viruses" or other information which may damage or otherwise interfere with GBC computer systems or data or tha
it'd scare the crap out of me to actually *license* anything I produce to someone like that. I'm fine with giving them specified usage rights.. but that's pretty much a writeoff to do what they want with it, as long as it doesn't directly net them income. The second disclaimer is enough to make sure I wouldn't sign this, really.
It's a "here, we'll take this. Oh, and by the way, you can be liable for it too!" license.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
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.
Good to know. I'd mod you up but I forfeited my mod points by posting. :-) Anyone else care to?
This is why I browse with a +6 flamebait modifier.
That 2TB iPod purchase is justified at last!
1.7 Million songs in my pocket!
not -1 offtopic... Stuper Poopers...
The great thing about garageband is the reviewing process. The way they've set it up, if you want to submit a song for peer review, you first have to review 15 randomly chosen songs from other bands. You can also review extra songs to put your songs up for review next. This way, you can't inflate your ratings by downloading your own song all day, and you can't get your friends to give you great reviews because of the random selection.
So, even though the reviews still depend on the questionable taste of all the other struggling musicians on the site, they're distributed and considered as fairly as possible.
Christ... They oughta remind you to check your links before you post or something... The real link: Trinidad Fiasco
There is absolutly no chance of the post being modded down now that you've done that AND if someone DOSE they'll probably get metamoded into oblivion as people won't look past your title to see WHY only seeing a random AC with no mod points of his own.
...."
Posts like this remind me of wanabe crossing guards.
Your about to cross 10 lanes of traffic and the light says "Walk". There is no way you'll cross in the 15 seconds a typical cross walk light gives you.
Once your almost on the other side when the light flashes "don't walk". Just then someone spots you and plays "crossing guard" accusing you of j walking.
Maybe you've had a similar experence? Someone makes accusations when acting on ignorence. So many of thies "mod parent up/down" posts are exactly that. No actual use of mod points, No actual risking of M2.
Instead post the vital details and let the moderators deside for themselfs. Don't say "mod up/down" just say "This guy has nothing to do with
Don't break the "forth wall" talking to the mods. Just respond.
friends and I have made this our unofficial offtopic board since were allowed to post anything there. Doesn't mean we will stop visiting here. http://www.anythingchat.com
Having spent hours downloading/sampling many hundereds of songs from unsigned bands, only a handlful (less than 10) weren't deleted.
Anybody have a decent way of finding new music from unsigned bands?
Only rock, metal and pop music.
no techno or remix type stuff please.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Or give them $100 for 'lifetime' membership, though they obviously cannot guarantee they'll be around for anybody's lifetime.
Yet another mu$ic indu$stry scam ... composers are forced to pay in order to get their stuff heard. Hey! Is anybody listening? We're the ones doing the work. You should be paying US!!
On garageband, you can recover only 3 songs. If you want to recover more, it will cost you $ 6.99 per song..
Do you mean we should now support Alexa and install the Alexa toolbar?
I had this crap band, back when I was 14, and we put some tracks out on the, then new, mp3.com. No one remembers the password, and we're all just trying to forget how crap we were, so if I want them to delete the songs, how do I do that?
I'd say part-learned, part personality. I've certainly learned the virtues of keeping backup copies, never deleting until a mobile copy has reached its destination, etc, the hard way. Mainly by losing data that, had I bothered to think beforehand, I'd have kept a spare copy of.
However, being a techie means I've learned from this. (Mainly 'cos I don't want to lose-data/look-dumb again) But I've seen people who never seem to learn.
I think the main thing is that techies tend to learn the lessons from the unimportant stuff (multimedia clips and downloads being relatively unimportant compared to work-data), so we get into good habits before the important stuff. Non-techies tend to learn when they lose their dissertation/lesson-plan/big-presentation.
Of course it's not quite that simple. I've seen techies who don't backup work-servers, and also people who don't really "get" computers beyond Word and MSN who have levels of redundancy that'd make a geek proud.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
n/t
The genre-list of GarageBand.Com is very restricted. They don't even have the genre classical.
Compare that to the elaborate list of genres and sub-genres that mp3.com offered and GBC is no serious contender.
Sounds like a good idea, and then I went to recover our old tunes. Nice of them to say that you have to pay if you want to recover more than three, after signing up. Grrr.
;)
Then it insists you choose three artists similar to you, from a rather limited drop down list. Someone should tell them that not everyone makes guitar-based music.
All our tunes are on our own website anyway. Couldn't find a link to delete the Garageband.com account (what a crap name anyway!) so I am awaiting an email back about it...
Oh, and download some tunes if you want, but I know they're not great, so don't bother flaming
Brewster Kahle
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I thought I was the exclusive copyright holder of my own material. How is it that they are able to get away with charging me for my own material that I had been assured (by mp3.com) was already deleted? And @ $7 usd at that?
Seems a series of well thought out loopholes made all of this possible.
//i have as many lives as people i know.
GRRRR!! After very specifically making sure that NOTHING was checked off to say it was ok for them to send me mail, and having found out that garageband are a bunch of scheming fucks, I go into my settings to see that they have reversed all my selections and have opted me IN to receiving ALL of their 'announcements' and 'lists'.
Anyone here a lawyer?
//i have as many lives as people i know.
The iRATE project downloads music from sites like these, and gives them to you inside a music player. You then say how much you like various tracks, and it compares your ratings to those of other people, and gives you more stuff it thinks you'll like. You end up with a large collection of indie music that is filtered to be what you consider good stuff. (And then you can buy CDs of it to support the band if you like :)
For the person who asked about good music on MP3.com: I've been missing my complete Laziest Men on Mars collection forever (they did the All Your Base song, but some of their other music was really good too).
I also liked this one guy SuperPope.
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
Oh great, but can I recover my unpaid artist royalties that MP3.com owed me??
I just used it, and all it is is a series of steps that...
A. Let's them, with your permission, access the information.
B. With your permission, then transfers the song data over to them.
They have nothing until you grant them permission.
You mean now the Music Picture Association of America is going to start suing people for distributing music? Where will the insanity end?
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
With that name, Garage Band, you can bet that Apple Lawyers will be hassling this company before the close of business today given its exposure in the media. Remember that GarageBand is the name of an Apple music-editing app that is part of iLife 2004. Then again, this outfit may have taken the name first.
Just a thought.
After the collapse of MP3.com, a lot of artists went on to cut out the middle man, and now sell their own music from their own sites.
The same support systems that existed for MP3.com still exist for independent artists doing their own thing. The same message boards, same chats, same artists, pushing and supporting each other's music. But now instead of passing on the latest MP3 scam, they share the information that helps others to build their own sites and sell their music directly to their audience.
We had an MP3 site. We made a nice bit of cash while they were doing pay-for-play, which immediately stopped when people were frauding the hell out of them. My favorite, which wasn't exactly fraud, but was a great idea was "if you play this song, you'll get a long porn movie after the song". We never resorted to this, but we did get quite a bit of free porn this way.
This actually worked, but needless to say, MP3's charts weren't always the way to find the best music. Pushing your own site is a lot harder, but we've found ways to do it, and we average about 50 - 100 downloads, per artist, per day on our site. Even more after our artists perform at a local show. All it took was a few flyers on the college campuses in our hometown and some car mags bought cheap from Vista Print. (All our artists have one for Nattytown and one for themselves; so simple, so easy).
It may not sound like a lot, but everyone can't make iTunes money, and we know we're not going to do it with unknown artists. But it's more money than they were making sitting on undistributed cd's. And even if it's a dollar a day, that's $1 we didn't have the day before.
If we can do it (and believe me, hubby and I are only step removed from being Joe & Jill end user), then anyone can. Of course we are hoping that one of our artists will "blow up", but I think we have more of chance doing that our own way (and we're still making money meanwhile) than by using an MP3 spin off.
I doubt we'll go that route again. Why should we spend $99 for their service when we can upload music to our own site for free?
Sites like Buy A Beat.com and our own Nattytown.com, don't need MP3, their clones, or their copies, or "partners" any more. I hope other people wake up and don't get sucked into using a remake of MP3's crappy service when even the worst of sites can keep their money with a little bit of effort.
irate is a GREAT idea, but IMHO the software isn't quite there yet... please give 'em a hand if you're a programmer (I think it's java-based, if I recall correctly).
you can't expect a site to host 10-20 terabytes of content and stay in bussiness with banner ads!
I own a rather large independent MP3 (and Ogg) site. TruSonic emailed me and later called me about licensing as well as "message(ing) the previous MP3.com artist community". Yeah, that's right MP3.com artists' email addresses were and still are for sale for anyone who wants to SPAM them. So the fact that they sold rights to the files themselves doesn't surprise me.
"I am contacting you on behalf of TruSonic, Inc. My name is Derrick Oien and I am the former President of Vivendi Universal Net Music and Media Group which included MP3.com, Rollingstone.com, eMusic and TruSonic. The purchasers of TruSonic have an established relationship with a large number of artists from the MP3.com website and are currently looking for a partner to maintain an ongoing relationship with an artist community website.
TruSonic is interested in entertaining offers from potential partners that would include the ability to message the previous MP3.com artist community within certain parameters, and establishing a licensing relationship for independent artist content for TruSonic's retail music business.
We have already been approached by a number of people and would like to make sure we give the various players the opportunity to respond. We would be interested in considering either exclusive or non-exclusive offers.
If you would be interested in discussing this further, please feel free to respond to me at (removed). We anticipate concluding this business in the next several weeks so a prompt reply would be appreciated."
Seriously, the whole underlying argument here is that these independent artists lost their recordings.
Look, if you're dumb enough to only have 1 copy of a recording, and dumb enough to only have that recording in mp3 format, and dumb enough to entrust that one copy to a free internet service, then hey, you've just learned a valuable lesson.
Yes, it sucks that bands lost this one service that hosted their songs for free, but there are many, many others out there. Just pick one.
Oh, and keep archival copies of everything you record on various media in various locations. Especially if you've got original multi-track stuff, never *ever* leave the studio without your own copy.
Aside from all this talk about lossy compression, some of you might want to know that CNET has recently launched music.download.com as a substitute for previous users of MP3.com to release their music.
I previously had an MP3.com account, and after I got the notification that the service was going down, I got an e-mail, along with the rest of us, from CNET announcing that they where going to set up a service like MP3.com.
CNET Downloads.com Music will still have artist pages with your photo, bio, song listings, etc. You can only upload 192kbps stereo MP3s (which is unfortunate because I was hoping for OGGs as well, but they need to do that for their streaming software).
It's still in the beta stage now. It should go public in "a few short weeks", but if you are an artist you can sign up now and start submitting your files. So, not only is the MP3.com archive not lost, but a similar service is comming back as well.
Greetings once again,
We have good news! We've just launched the Download.com Music artist beta, and you are invited to come upload your music now. We've been working around the clock in an effort to help you get your music back online, and now it's time to take the first step. Submit your music now:
http://music.download.com/
You will be able to upload your MP3s, a photo, a bio, and other salient details. Note that this is a beta launch, which means that we need your help to smooth out all the glitches and help us find bugs that might come up. The Download.com Music site will launch to the public in the next few weeks.
If you choose not to sign up for this free service, this is the last you'll hear from us.
We're excited about the beta launch, and hope you are too. We'd like to once again thank each of you for your patience. Get started uploading your music right now!
http://music.download.com/
Aaron Newton
Product Manager
Download.com Music
music.download.com
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It is Java based, and I am a developer on it :) (hence the plug). If we were to get a couple more programmers, designers, writers, or whatever, it would move along at a good clip. A rewrite of the server is underway which will mean that making that side of things better will a lot easier.
Also, a lot of work has gone into the client itself. If you haven't checked it out for a while, go download the latest version (right now the CVS version is broken, hopefully that'll be fixed in a couple of days)
Out of the interests of complete information exchange, I thought I'd post this to the /. readers. Even though someone else has already mentioned it, here is a snippet from a press release.
San Francisco, CA - January 7, 2004 - GarageBand.com, the internet's largest legal source of free MP3 music, and Apple Computer have signed an agreement to share the name "GarageBand." The deal was signed in April 2003 but kept confidential by both parties until now.
Under the terms of the agreement, Apple Computer (Nasdaq:AAPL) pays GarageBand.com for the rights to use the name "GarageBand" for its music-creation software, part of the Apple iLife suite launched this week. GarageBand.com (http://www.garageband.com) will otherwise retain its original rights to use the name for a vast range of products and services.
GarageBand Link to the press release.Which, when you think about it, this makes sense. Apple paid to license the whole "one click technology" even though many people said "Yeah, but it's so obvious, how can it have a patent." Apple likes to be very one sided with respect to their legal department. They send enough cease and desist that they don't want to see one come their way so they just pay for it even if it's something that might be "obviously" no where near the same.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
Of course they're one-sided, they have to be because they're a major corporation. They can't toe the line and stir up controversy like individual hackers on the internet, they have a responsibility to their customers and shareholders to obey the law and get sued as little as possible.
Our records indicate that one or more of your songs currently is enrolled in the truSONIC Music Program. If you want to keep that music enrolled in the truSONIC Music Program and permit truSONIC to consider using that music on truSONIC music playlists in the future, you do not need to take any action at this time.
If, on the other hand, you would prefer to remove all your music from the truSONIC Music Program, you may do so by clicking here.
This was sent out to all MP3.com artists in December.
Only the songs that were marked available for Trusonic retail service were saved. So if the artist did not check that box when uploading a song it is gone. The artist has the choice of 3 songs to upload on the Garageband site for free after that you have to pay. Garageband was a cool idea, but after awhile having 14 year olds tell you that your music sux gets real old. It never had the traffic of MP3.com or the services. I think the CNet resurrection of MP3.com's domain will be pretty exciting for artists. Dennis Jennings http://celestial-image.com