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Online Music Storage Firm MP3tunes Files For Bankruptcy

Posted by timothy on from the not-his-first-rodeo dept.

fishmike writes "Online music storage firm MP3tunes, Inc filed for bankruptcy in a U.S. court, following its prolonged run-in with music publishing giant EMI Group over copyright issues, court filings showed. MP3tunes is a so-called cloud music service that lets users store music in online 'lockers.' Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc and Google Inc have similar cloud services."

10 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Never heard of it by moozey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How very interesting, please do go on.

  2. Re:Never heard of it by WiiVault · · Score: 2, Interesting

    His totally valid point likely references the 2 sentence uninformative summary. His point is far more insightful than yours frankly. Somebody has to call out extremely lazy "news" posts which give next to no info, and would be a joke as a random blog post by a tween.

  3. Not a lot of assets by HairyNevus · · Score: 3, Informative
    FTA:

    MP3tunes had filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 code, which envisages liquidation of a company's operation. In the court filing, the company had listed out assets of about $7,800 and liabilities of $2.1 million.

    Good luck with that...

    --
    You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
    1. Re:Not a lot of assets by Wireless+Joe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      FTA: MP3tunes had filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 code, which envisages liquidation of a company's operation. In the court filing, the company had listed out assets of about $7,800 and liabilities of $2.1 million. Good luck with that...

      They should just sell some of the trillions of dollars worth of song files they're holding on to. According to statutory damages, each song is worth about $150K; they could erase their entire debt by selling just 14 tracks.

  4. Now I understand by Mathinker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    EMI probably knew that this was the probable outcome --- which explains why they repeatedly tried to add Michael Robertson as a personal defendent. Looks to me that Big Media has had it in for him ever since he proved, with the original mp3.com website, that good music could be generated and distributed without them.

    I hope he and his family manage to come out financially unscathed. The original mp3.com site rocked.

    1. Re:Now I understand by janap · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Aww - those were the days! Mp3.com actually PAID indie artists to have their stuff on the site. Sent me cheques all the way to Sweden. The fees for cashing them in were greater than their value though... But at least we were PAID. Mr Robertson is for real and I wish him good luck in his future endeavors.

      (I eventually brought our expired cheques with me on a trip to California, and the staff at mp3.com HQ happily exchanged them for a fresh one that I was able to cash in.)

    2. Re:Now I understand by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The original mp3.com site rocked.

      Indeed it did. In fact, the last time I purchased new CDs was from some bands on mp3.com. Since then its been all used discs or piracy.

      However, not all was so great with mp3.com. I ran one of those tools that analyze WAV files for signs of WAV->MP3->WAV conversions and it turns out that all of the CDs I bought from mp3.com were "upconverts" from 128Kbps mp3. And that was long before LAME got awesome - it may even have not existed back then, so I'm now stuck with crummy 128Kbps encodes. But that's better than not having any of that music at all.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  5. Re:[shrugs] by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 3, Informative

    Y'all forgot the episode from the last season of the Slashdot Show. If you had caught up with that one, it was all about how this case was supposed to test key legal waters about this area of music copyright law which is the other 80% of the story that Submitter missed. The point was all about what qualifies as your property when it is space-shifted to the cloud vs the liability of the services.

    Commentators that time remarked about how "companies as big as Google and Amazon and Apple aren't exactly stupid, so if they all open variants of these music locker services, their chief of legal must have decided that it's better than even chances to call a showdown vs the RIAA. Some other day we can all have lunch and argue about what precise finesses pass muster but that's why you guys should have heard of them.

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  6. Re:Never heard of it by Mannfred · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only bit which rang a bell FTFA:

    Based in San Diego, California, MP3tunes was launched in 2005 by Robertson three years after stepping down as CEO of MP3.com, which was also founded by him.

  7. MP3 Tunes Wasn't Even the First Locker Service by szyzyg · · Score: 2

    Myplay.com back in 1999 was offering a digital music locker online.
    http://web.archive.org/web/20000510123618/http://www.myplay.com/

    my.mp3.com borrowed large parts of the myplay design but instead of uploading they used their CD verification system which was judged to be illegal, then.... later mr Robertson copied myplay's entire feature set for mp3tunes.