MusicDownload.com Goes Beta

This letter was addressed to former MP3.com (which doesn’t exist anymore) artists:

We have good news! We’ve just launched the Download.com Music Artist Beta, and you are invited to come upload your music now. We’ve been working ’round the clock in an effort to help you get your music back online, and now it’s time to take the first step. Submit your music now:

You will be able to upload your MP3s, a photo, a bio, and other salient details. (Note that this is a beta launch, which means that we need your help to smooth out all the glitches and help us find bugs that might come up.) The Download.com music site will launch to the public in the next several weeks. We’ll notify you again before we launch the consumer download site so you can preview your artist page before we make it broadly available. Submit your music early to make sure we can review it before the consumer site launches.

A few details: We accept 192kbps MP3 files in stereo with 44Khz sampling. We’ll use these higher quality files for user downloading when we launch, but will later switch to 128Kbs versions for downloads and streaming, as well as lower bit rates for dial-up users. We are allowing 50MB of space per artist for these uploaded files. This means you can create fifty 1MB files or one 50MB file. It’s up to you. Each submission to Download.com Music must abide by our terms and conditions. Because we want everyone to be treated fairly, and because we must ensure that the content that goes on any CNET Networks web site meets the standards that our network is known for, each and every submission will be reviewed by our staff.

Some insight on our plans: As you know, there are hundreds of sites that provide free artist services and free legal downloads for fans, but none that expose artists to a substantial audience. Download.com will launch a service — free to artists and users — that provides the ultimate stage for artists’ visibility before its established audience of tens of millions of unique monthly visitors. No music service, free or otherwise, can come close to this level of exposure.

This sneak peek launch is only the beginning. We’ve got a lot of great features up our sleeves, which we’ll be rolling out in the months following our initial launch. But we need your help and feedback in order to make Download.com Music a success. We’ll be offering lots of ways for you to give us that feedback, through message boards, support forms, and through an artist-only newsletter.

We’re excited about the beta launch, and hope you are too. We’d like to once again thank each of you for your patience. Get started uploading your music right now!