Yet another change for mp3.com
Published November 29, 2003
There was some news about mp3.com this past week that didn't get a lot of press. The mp3.com domain, the one time press and investment darling of the digital music revolution, has been by Vivendi Universal to CNET Networks.
As with everything on the internet, thing change. I can remember back in 94 when people on Usenet were excited because there was a new tag that allowed HTML coders to make items blink on their website and look how fast that faded away. Similarly, I can remember the original concept of mp3.com being a portal for independent artists as a means of distributing their own works to the masses. Things changed shortly after it went public, mp3.com launched a service (my.mp3.com) that allowed it's users to store music digitally, so a user can access it via any computer on the net. This lead to legal issues between the company and their eventual buyer - Vivendi.
Once Vivendi was in control of mp3.com, the grass roots portal for artist took a back seat to the pushing of crap music by Vivendi Universal to the visitors of the site. Independent artists saw their storage space slashed, their visitors were facing increasing numbers of pop-up ads and the server connections became more and more unreliable. When I visited mp3.com, I was going to the site to get some undiscovered electronic music artist and not to hear Madonna's latest single. This blatant attempt to use mp3.com as a commercial means killed the site, which is why they Vivendi sold the domain. Vivendi ran into the same problem that the original mp3.com suffered from - there was no sustainable revenue behind mp3.com (commercial or independent). CNET and Vivendi also have a variable in the sale that is drawing some heat; the 750,000 song back catalogue of mp3.com. The database of music was not included in the sale because CNET does not have the capacity to move the songs to their network (aka: they don't want to spend the money) and Vivendi does not want to keep the database active due to cost.
CNET now faces some critical issues, what will their independent service really provide for musicians? How will they succeed where the original mp3.com failed? If their grand experiment does not succeed in two years, or whenever they get tired of spending the money, what are the going to do with the hundreds of thousands of songs they are hosting?
I wish CNET the best in their new venture, truly I do. Maybe the reason that the sale to mp3.com to CNET didn't get much press is because the one time hero of independent music is irrelevant, no matter who owns it.
- Yet another change for mp3.com
- Published: November 29, 2003
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Music: News
- Writer: Van Santos
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Comments on this articleComments
I totally agree. With the time and money one could do better than a company who is out for just profits.
Something like this should be done by individuals who have a passion for it
The main problem with online companies being bought by one of the major record companies is twofold. The likes of MP3.com were created to play the stock market, not sell a product or service, when that bubble burst, they sold the company.
The majors (Universal, Warners, Sony, BMG, EMI) aren't in the business of selling music. They sell audio-carriers, shiny, plastic discs. They have codefied a whole system which ties music to a carrier. They never envisioned music would become discreet from the carrier hence their problem with the internet, since there is no physical carrier they can sell. And if they asked any software company, they would learn that DRM doesn't work.
There is a viable market for selling music over the net, but the majors have created a legal system which prevents that. They've effectively screwed themselves.
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i reckon there IS a gap that could be filled by a service offering enough features for the right price. The problem is these large companies tend to envision massive profits from their ideas, and when this doesn't happen almost instantly, they give up and sell.
If only i had the time, money and contacts, i reckon i could do better than both vivendi and cnet