there seem to be some misunderstandings about GarageBand.com here. GarageBand.com *does* offer free MP3 downloads. if you are confused about this, just visit their home page, and click on the links for any of the songs. its true, they do also offer realaudio streaming as a second option, but that doesn't preclue you from using the sight purely as an mp3 download sight.
interestingly, GarageBand.com claims to have 100,000 bands (not counting the additional 250,000 coming from resurrecting the MP3.com archive).
in fairness to CNET, the original posting is slightly inaccurate, although essentially correct. today was not the launch of CNET's "new MP3.com," but their new music download sight ("music.download.com"). CNET has proclaimed that they intend to do something entirely different with MP3.com.
however, the thing they launched today *was* their best effort to appease the disenfranchised MP3.com artist community, and it has clearly fallen short. they (CNET) have actually been trying to sign up artists for several weeks now, and the fact that less than 3,000 artists have signed up out of the 250,000 former MP3.com artists is telling.
as a former MP3.com artist myself, i have been extremely pleased with GarageBand.com. unlike any other independent music sight out there, the charts on GarageBand.com really seem to find quite good music, and their collaborative-filtering system for determining the charts really seems to work.
Slashdot Mirror
there seem to be some misunderstandings about GarageBand.com here. GarageBand.com *does* offer free MP3 downloads. if you are confused about this, just visit their home page, and click on the links for any of the songs. its true, they do also offer realaudio streaming as a second option, but that doesn't preclue you from using the sight purely as an mp3 download sight. interestingly, GarageBand.com claims to have 100,000 bands (not counting the additional 250,000 coming from resurrecting the MP3.com archive). in fairness to CNET, the original posting is slightly inaccurate, although essentially correct. today was not the launch of CNET's "new MP3.com," but their new music download sight ("music.download.com"). CNET has proclaimed that they intend to do something entirely different with MP3.com. however, the thing they launched today *was* their best effort to appease the disenfranchised MP3.com artist community, and it has clearly fallen short. they (CNET) have actually been trying to sign up artists for several weeks now, and the fact that less than 3,000 artists have signed up out of the 250,000 former MP3.com artists is telling. as a former MP3.com artist myself, i have been extremely pleased with GarageBand.com. unlike any other independent music sight out there, the charts on GarageBand.com really seem to find quite good music, and their collaborative-filtering system for determining the charts really seems to work.
Given the shut-down of MP3.com, one of the other big winners for 2003 has got to be Garageband.com, which has bumped up to become #1. Garageband.com now claims to be the web's largest community of independent musicians and the largest LEGAL source of free MP3 music (according to their press release -- assuming they are telling the truth).