Digital Mappers Go To Parts Unknown >>
<< Porn Purveyors Getting Squeezed
 tdicon 


Failures

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Jul 10th 2003 11:00am





Fat Lady Sings For MP3.com

from the bye-bye dept

MP3.com, one of the original online music sites, that nearly got sued out of existence until they were cheap enough for Universal music to buy, looks like it won't be around much longer. Vivendi, the distressed owner of Universal, has shut down the European offering of MP3.com and is looking to sell the US operations. The story of MP3.com is yet another example of the music industry figuring out the best way to kill a good thing. They were one of the first companies to come up with the idea that you could buy a CD online and immediately get the MP3s while waiting for the actual CD to be delivered. Of course, the RIAA freaked out about this sort of service, and sued them (and eventually won), saying this service was a violation of copyrights - even though it was only for people who could prove they actually owned the CD in question. Then, once Universal bought them, they did very little with the assets, which could have helped them move into the digital world.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1.  

    iTunes Music Store

    identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, Jul 10th, 2003 @ 11:54am

    Any word on when they're going to port this to the PC or am I going to have to break down, violate my principles, and buy a used Mac off of ebay so I can legitimately buy legal, copyrighted, popular music files now that they're the only game left in town?

    Wouldn't that make them a monopoly then? :-)

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    So Sad

    identicon
    Jeremiah, Jul 10th, 2003 @ 12:04pm

    It is so, so sad to see MP3.com have an obituary that reads like it does. It was such a good idea, and it was actually working for a while. THen the majors got a hold of it, and did the only thing they knew how: made it thier biatch.

    Well, there's still IUMA. Sadly, no other web-based music service allows artists to sell one-off CD's and still get paid.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Chris, Jul 10th, 2003 @ 12:34pm

    I've discovered quite a few artists via MP3 - and bought a few CD's from them. However, I quite using them when my [email protected] email address became a porn magnet. They either sold it or somebody hacked their dB. They lost my trust at that point, and the few times I've used it since then I've used bogus email addresses. Good example of killing long term customer trust for a short term gain.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: iTunes Music Store

    identicon
    Mick, Jul 10th, 2003 @ 1:25pm

    Rumor has it that iTunes will be available for the windows platform before Christmas. (this is all based on a want-ad apple placed looking for a windows dev to port iTunes to windows in a 4 month timeframe)

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>


Digital Mappers Go To Parts Unknown >>
<< Porn Purveyors Getting Squeezed
 tdicon 

A word from our Sponsors...
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss

Powered by Postrank

From the Techdirt Archive...
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This