Good News For MP3.com Artists

We reported last week that MP3.com has been bought out by CNET, and that all of the music was to be rather unceremoniously dumped into the digital dumpster. This is no longer true:

MP3.com Artist Announcement
A message from CNET Networks, Inc. (CNET)

Dear MP3.com artists:

Last week CNET Networks, Inc. (CNET) announced that it purchased certain assets of MP3.com, Inc. As MP3.com previously notified you, MP3.com will not transfer your personal information, music, images, related content, and other information to CNET, and accordingly the MP3.com web site will no longer be available in its current form after December 2, 2003 at 12:00 PM PDT.

In response to the overwhelming feedback CNET received from the MP3.com artist community following this news, CNET’s Download.com is answering your call to build a free music upload/download destination for independent artists. Launching in early 2004, this new site will give independent musicians free hosting for their songs and related material, as well as valuable exposure to Download.com’s tens of millions of unique monthly visitors. Download.com plans to do for musicians what it did for software developers when it launched nearly 10 years ago: give independent artists an affordable way to build a market for their work.

We’d like to let you know when our new site will be available for you to begin uploading your songs and building your fan base. Please visit and sign up to receive e-mail updates about this new service. In the meantime, we recommend that you make backup copies of your songs and other content before the MP3.com web site goes offline on December 2, 2003. Once we’ve launched our new service, we’d love to have the opportunity to host your music and welcome you to the Download.com community.

Sincerely,
CNET Networks, Inc. (CNET)

Excellent news for all involved – I couldn’t imagine that CNET was jsut going to throw away all that content and the built-in audience.