MP3.com
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Type of site | Music |
---|---|
Owner | Paramount Global |
Created by | Michael Robertson |
URL | www |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional |
Launched | December 17, 1997[1] |
MP3.com was a
Original version
History
MP3.com was co-founded in December 1997 by Michael Robertson and Greg Flores, as part of Z Company. Z Company ran a variety of websites: filez.com, websitez.com, and sharepaper.com, purchased from Lars Matthiassen.
The idea to purchase the MP3.com domain arose when Flores was monitoring search traffic on filez.com, a
Robertson told Flores to search for a site that was working with legitimate MP3 information and see if that company would be interested in working with them. Robertson e-mailed the then-owner of MP3.com, Martin Paul, to purchase the URL. The business plan was to use MP3.com to drive more search queries to Filez.com, the source of most of the company revenue at the time. Filez.com's free search results contained pay-for-placement click-through results. MP3.com received over 18,000 unique users in the first 24 hours of making the URL live, and Flores received his first advertising purchase call within 18 hours of launch. The resulting advertising purchase and traffic caused the team to re-direct focus to MP3.com.
In 1998, the
Cox Interactive Media invested $45 million and acquired 10% of MP3.com in June 1999. A few months later, the two companies launched mp3radio.com, a joint project intended to create mini-websites to offer MP3 downloads, concert tickets, and, eventually, CD sales to listeners of Cox's terrestrial radio stations.[4][5]
MP3.com went public on July 21, 1999, and raised over $370 million, at the time, the single largest technology IPO to date. The stock was offered at $28 per share, rose to $105 per share during the day, and closed at $63.3125.
In its heyday, MP3.com was the Internet home to many independent musicians, each of whom had an individual web presence at the URL www.mp3.com/*name-of-act*. At the end of 1999, MP3.com launched a promotion that allowed these artists to monetize their content on the site. Called "Pay for Play" or P4P, it used an algorithm to pay each MP3.com artist based on the number of streams and downloads of their songs.
Artists provided 96 hours of audio content per day from the summer of 1999 to the summer of 2003: about one song per minute or 16 listening years of audio content over four years. A staff of trained music experts reviewed all content before publication to prevent uploads of unlicensed materials.[citation needed]
At its peak, MP3.com delivered over 4 million
Infrastructure
The technology infrastructure at MP3.com consisted of over 1500 simple Intel-based servers running
My.MP3.com
On January 12, 2000, MP3.com launched the "My.MP3.com" service which enabled users to securely register their CDs and then stream digital copies online from the My.MP3.com service. Since consumers could only listen online to music they already proved they owned the company saw this as a great opportunity for revenue by allowing fans to access their music online. The record industry did not see it that way and sued MP3.com claiming that the service constituted unauthorized duplication and promoted copyright infringement.
Judge
MP3.com sold
Weakened financially, MP3.com was eventually acquired by
Vivendi Universal had difficulties growing the service and eventually dismantled the original site, selling off all of its assets including the URL and logo to CNET in 2003.
E-mails to MP3.com artists and a placeholder message at MP3.com announced that CNET would be coming up with replacement services in the future, based on its current
A business unit of MP3.com, Trusonic, which provides background music and messaging services to retailers, acquired licenses with 250,000 artists representing 1.7 million songs. Trusonic partnered with GarageBand.com to revive these artist accounts. Trusonic retained most of the software technology developed at MP3.com and exists today as part of the Mood Media organization.
On March 25, 2009, MP3.com announced in an editor blog entry that they would begin redirecting all of their artist pages and categories to Last.fm.[9]
References
- ^ "Mp3.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. Retrieved July 19, 2016.
- ^ "MP3.com Shutdown Could Delete Indie Tracks". PCWorld. December 3, 2003. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
- ^ Young, Rob (April 1999). "Multi Media". The Wire. No. 182. p. 84.
- ^ "Cox, MP3.com Plan Music Web Sites", June 9, 1999, Apnewsarchive.com, retrieved December 24, 2016
- ^ Li, Kenneth (September 2, 1999). "Interactive Media and MP3.com announce the creation of Mp3radio.com". CNN. Retrieved December 24, 2016.
- ^ a b c Morgan, Laura (May 25, 2000). "Sell Out". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on September 24, 2012. Retrieved May 21, 2008.
- ^ Ketola, Jari (November 21, 2000). "Alanis Morissette sells MP3.com stock". After Dawn. Retrieved May 21, 2008.
- ^ Press release: "Vivendi Universal Closes on Acquisition of MP3.com", August 29, 2001
- ^ "MP3.com". Important notice regarding MP3.com. Retrieved March 26, 2009.[permanent dead link]
External links
- Official website
- A case study of MP3.com by Andrew Burke and Chris Montgomery
- RIAA Sues MP3.com - January 2000 article on the music industry's lawsuit against My. MP3.com
- old mp3.com pages on the internet archive
- Lyrics Freak site with MP3.com story