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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."

4 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
  2. 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.