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Music Media

MP3.com To Restart My.MP3.com 44

Posted by Hemos from the gutsy-move dept.
retep writes: "MP3.com is planning to restart the My.MP3.com service that launched the lawsuit against it. However, it will probably launch without any music from Universal Music Corp. Instead it will probably offer music from record companies that have reached licensing deals with MP3.com Full story online at 32bitonline. " This had actually been submitted earlier, but this story had some additional information. The Universal is a key part because those are the ones who won the lawsuit against MP3.com, while they've managed to settle with almost everyone else.
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MP3.com To Restart My.MP3.com More

MP3.com To Restart My.MP3.com

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  • i.e., the record companies that have settled with mp3.com, and umg or whatever that is still suing, are about to make fat amounts of money out of mp3.com.

    Do the artists, whose music it is, see any of this money?

    Why exactly DO record companies seem to require artists to sign over the copyright for their recordings? Could not, for example, the record companies accept "rights to artist's music for x years"?

    Bring it on.

    How come there are so many injustices in the world, but the people who care most about these injustices are in the position least able to do anything about them?

    power gels together, power breeds with power, until you and I have nothing.
  • And hopefully, those companies that have cut a deal will see an increase in sales. Universal, hopefully, will see a decline in popularity of its artists, leaving the artists no choice but to cut seperate deals with MP3.com moving us closer to switching the middleman from super greedy record label to super greedy dot.com company.
  • thanks for the clarification, sorry for posting that error. I did know that, but must not have had enough oxygen to the brain.

    I think Alanis was headlining the mp3.com tour.

    Rader

  • Yes, but I'd mention that mp3.com settled with all the other major labels. They will now resume streaming all those titles through the my.mp3.com service but _not_ any music put out by Universal. Reasonable, but also a payback in spades to UMG.

    It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on Universal's CD sales. One would doubt it, but it might have an impact.

    Universal might rethink and actually settle with mp3.com. Hmmm, five years of appeals to receive $118 million versus $20 million for licensing per year, say 6% interest, looks like close to a wash to me in terms of net present value. Universal's potential marketing losses over the five years might make a deal attractive. They're sure not going to be very successful with their pay-to-download model.

    Since the big music labels are nothing if not highly competitive with one another, it would not greatly surprise me to see Universal _buy_ mp3.com to regain parity in Internet presence. In that case, one would hope that the board of mp3.com would have the sense to make Universal pay at least $118 million (plus all their legal fees) _more_ than mp3.com is reasonably worth.
  • "This bullying by the recording industry really has to stop. They get more than enough per CD sold, without having to charge (effectively) multiple times for the same music."


    Just think how many times the Internet Service Providers will get paid for transmitting the same bits over and over again. Those bastards. And how the greedy power companies charges multiple times for using the same electrons. They send the same stuff to you 60 times per second. It's got to stop. The line must be drawn here!

  • Yea -- would it not suck to pay all the lawsuits, quiet all the critics, sell out all your morals and then still be faced with the issue of "how in the hell do we make a profit..."

    I know it has already been said -- but look at the "successful" e-companies like amazon.com that actually do have a product and actually do have a revenue stream going in both directions -- and yet they still have 1 foot in the grave and lots of people with shovels.

    IMHO -- in the end, the only good sights will be the ones ran by lottery winners who happen to get a kick out of running a website and loosing a little money. (and don't mind a few lawsuits)
  • >>Mp3.com's business plan appears to be something akin to setting up a cd store which buys discs in in bulk and then gives them out for free.

    MP3.com has more revenue streams than just ad revenue from my.mp3.com. Hundreds of radio stations nationwide [mp3.com] are paying mp3.com to come up with "local music" shows (which they are required to provide due to FCC licensing); they've launched a Muzac competitor [mp3.com] to provide digital music for stores and restaurants; and they're expanding their pay-to-listen music channels [mp3.com], which are composed of music that they've bought the rights to. My.mp3.com is and always was just a small part of their business plan.
  • The big five record companies (are there still five?) only care about artists' intellectual property/copyrights insofar as they provide a method for controlling the means of distribution. Record companies are merely huge marketing and distribution networks - they control the rights to copy and sell the works produced by artists under contract to them. Currently, the record company owns the copyright to a recording for the first 35 years of its existence, at which time the artist can file claim to his/her copyright, which he/she will then hold until it enters public domain, 95 years after it was produced. The RIAA recently attempted to redefine musical recordings as 'works for hire' which would grant them copyright for the full 95 years! The artists in the mp3.com case will probably see some royalties (which in most cases will go towards paying off the advances they received from the record companies). The record companies get richer, the artists are still working their butts off, mp3.com will go bankrupt, and you and i will still be shelling out $16 for a CD which costs $4 for the record companies to put out. Support your local music scene.
  • I have some issues with my.mp3.com, napster and the like. Maybe they're legal, and maybe they're not. But the simple fact is, if they ARE legal, they're walking a very fine line and you WILL invite lawsuits, and being so close to the edge, it doesnt' take much more than a simple personal opinion to rule one way or the other. And the consequences are so dire if you lose.

    The biggest problem with these lawsuits are that they're setting precedent. They're establishing that what was once perhaps on the edge of legality, has now crossed over and will start bring other less questionable activities into the spotlight.

    Imagine if napster loses. We will now have a precedent that trading copyrighted music is illegal, or maybe just music by certain companies. Who knows, but now someone will get an itch and go after people running gnutella servers. Since gnutella doesn't run a centralized server, anyone who searches for a song will go through MANY servers to find it, each server passing the information along. It could potentially be stated that EACH of those servers, even those not serving anything, are equivalant in scope to napster. Someday
    someone will set up shop on a university network with a packetsniffer, bust hundreds of people, and make an example out of them.

    We don't want this to drift into generic file trading as well. Because you can trade files other than mp3's on gnutella and if gnutella is declared illegal, where will they go next?

    -Restil
  • Just how long can you keep afloat such a hugely loss making website in the hope that it will one day be profitable?

    Makes you kind of wonder about this recent /. article (He says with tongue in cheek): Western Union Cracked, Credit Cards Stolen [slashdot.org]

    (With sincere apologies to anyone who actually DID have their Credit Card info stolen -- my heart goes out to you.)

  • Re:Not funny. (Score:5)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Monday September 11, 2000 @01:35AM (#789427) Homepage
    I agree.
    Clearly the sociopolitical and economic ramifications of this dramatic intersection between so-called new economy companies and the established purveyors of copyrighted material warrant sober consideration. Any attempt at facetious commentary demonstrates a profound disregard for the implications this issue has on the marketplace wherein intellectual property is exchanged - to say nothing of the impact of the internet mindset on the established concept of rule of law.
    Furthermore (not to put too fine a point on it) the practice on this interactive discussion forum of submitting whimsical messages for internet display and perusal reflects a general immaturity on the part of these so-called "trolls" and their disrespect for the time and energy of their peers who attempt to have meaningful and productive e-dialogs within these cyberwalls.
    --Shoeboy
  • Some artists [mchawking.com] are making their works available for free. MC (Stephen) Hawking has put up three of his works [mchawking.com] for no cost. Check it out.

  • Is there something fundamentally different about online businesses that mean that they seem to feel that they can avoid the law? Without meaning to put them down, it does seem like a disproportionate number of them have run into conflict with the legal system, and especially when it comes to the area of copyright.

    Whilst we all agree that copyright needs to adapt to the new paradigm of online digital music, it does seem like "dot-coms" are jumping the gun and attempting to implement systems which are patently illegal under current laws rather than doing the sensible thing and lobbying for changes in the law. After all, what sensible company would risk the troubles that Napster and MP3.com have suffered?

    Maybe it's because of the shortcomings in the viability of the "dot-com" model, in which profitability comes from selling equity rather than from making a real profit. With such an abstract model anyway, companies may feel that they have little to lose in taking the big risks of breaking the law. After all, if it wins, it could win big. And if it fails, well they'd probably have run out of money within a year or two anyway, like other [boo.com] companies [goatse.cx] have done recently.

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • Just how long can you keep afloat such a hugely loss making website in the hope that it will one day be profitable?

    I think Amazon have managed about 4 years so far..
  • I just don't understand why they're pursuing the model. Check out Sonic Net's [sonicnet.com] personalized radio service -- I believe it's essentially the same model as standard radio, where royalties are payed for songs played, but a) it isn't trying to do an end-around on the current music business model and b) it allows you to listen to an amazingly wide variety of music without owning the CDs.

    I'm not eager to go back to listening to music I already own while waiting for the buffer to be filled between tracks.

  • Amazon will go soon (Score:3)

    by tilly ( 7530 ) on Monday September 11, 2000 @01:54AM (#789432)
    They cannot raise venture capital, cannot raise bonds, and have bonds due in a few months. Without a miracle (eg being bought out by Borders) they are toast. IIRC by Christmas.

    Then Barnes and Noble will be able to raise prices and actually start making a healthy profit online. Which will let them get back to wiping out Borders...

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • I'm a big fan of mainstream alternative/rock/punk. I'm wondering where I can find information on what label a given band is signed with? I used My.Mp3.Com a lot, and I really miss the service. I wonder how many bands (from Universal) I won't be able to stream? Anyone know how to help me find out?
  • Don't buy Universal Music Corp CDs. More importantly, we need this to be a rallying point. This *is* historical. As the net pervades society and replaces traditional broadcast we should leave Universal Music Corp out, thereby restricting them to the past they are trying to foist on us.
  • Ummm.. No...
    Your analogy is somewhat flawed. Your ISP charges you to host your connection to the net, and keep a service going.
    If we put it in context, it would be like your ISP saying 'Oh, you've connected up from a different number. We will now charge you another fee for dialling up from this point, as we cannot prove it is you calling.'.
    I have no problems paying for what I use, but I seriously have a problem paying twice for the use of one service.

  • The "Paying twice" syndrome strikes again. (Score:5)

    by malkavian ( 9512 ) on Monday September 11, 2000 @01:58AM (#789436)
    As far as I can see, from this article, the recording industry gets paid TWICE for each track you own, if you use the MP3.com service.
    The software scans your CDs to ensure you have already got access to the CD (so, you could cut your own if you so needed.. Copying isn't hte issue here).
    So, you've already paid the recording industry once, for the CD you've already bought.
    However. If you want to access this online, without having to take all your CDs with you, or spend hours ripping and uploading to webspace (hideously wasteful on bandwidth and storage space.. All that replication that rarely even hits a webcache on the net), a SECOND fee is required, as MP3.com are now required to pay a licencing fee on those tracks that you've already paid for!
    This reeks of that 'lets slap a tax on blank CDs because they may, on some occasions be used to copy music'.
    This bullying by the recording industry really has to stop. They get more than enough per CD sold, without having to charge (effectively) multiple times for the same music.
    If they're going to charge a licence fee, then I feel that it's only the same as paying for the music in the first place, so MP3.com should stop checking for ownership of the CD in the first place, as they are effectively paying the licence fee to distribute this music anyway.
    This, then, is not piracy, but a new distribution method.
    Cutting out the CD manufacturer middleman would save me a packet on my music purchases...

    Malk
  • Hey check out web-nap invalidpagfault.com [invalidpagefault.com] You could still download songs using web based napster through port 80 :) @school or @work.
  • Why would you need to? Just download them from Napster... (Argh! I'm kidding! Somone get Lars off me!!)
  • I recall they have around 800 million in investment capital.
  • Here's a way they can make money. You can now find the DeCSS song [mp3.com] on mp3.com. When the MPAA sues, mp3.com may just have enough legal resources to win the dumb case, after which they'll sue the MPAA for [put something here]. mp3.com then uses the money awarded them in punitive damages to pay off all the copyright infringement stuff, maybe with some to spare. All us geeks who have worried for so long about these issues can just sit back and watch the ironies flow...

  • Re:Who's on Universal? (Score:4)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Monday September 11, 2000 @05:29AM (#789441) Homepage
    SonicNet [sonicnet.com] seems to have good info about artists (including their label).

    UMG owns the following labels [umusic.com]: A&M Records, Decca Record Company, Deutsche Grammophon, Geffen Records, Interscope Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Jimmy and Doug's Farmclub.com, MCA Nashville, MCA Records, Mercury Records, Motown Records, Philips, Polydor, Universal Records, and Verve Music Group.

    Artists include [umusic.com]: Bryan Adams, Aqua, Erykah Badu, Banda Eva, Cecilia Bartoli, Beck, Bee Gees, George Benson, BLACKstreet, Mary J. Blige, Andrea Bocelli, Bon Jovi, Marco Borsato, Boyz II Men, Boyzone, The Cardigans, Jacky Cheung, Claudinho & Buchecha, Counting Crows, The Cranberries, Sheryl Crow, DMX, E o Tchan, Melissa Etheridge, Mylene Farmer, Kirk Franklin, Peter Gabriel (North American rights only), Vince Gill, Guns'N'Roses, Johnny Hallyday, Herbie Hancock, Hanson, Dru Hill, Kyosuke Himuro, Hole, Enrique Iglesias, Al Jarreau, Jay-Z, Elton John, K-Ci & JoJo, B.B. King, Diana Krall, Patti LaBelle, Eric Levi (ERA), Limp Bizkit, Live, LL Cool J, Luna Sea, Marilyn Manson, Reba McEntire, Brian McKnight, Metallica (excluding US and Japan), Molotov, Nine Inch Nails, 98N , No Doubt, Joan Osborne, Florent Pagny, Luciano Pavarotti, Rammstein, Andre Rieu, Rosana, Spitz, Sting, George Strait, Texas, Shania Twain, U2, The Wallflowers, Caetano Veloso, Stevie Wonder, Trisha Yearwood, Zucchero, ABBA, Aerosmith, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, James Brown, The Carpenters, Eric Clapton, Patsy Cline, John Coltrane, The Commodores, Bing Crosby, Count Basie, Bo Diddley, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, The Four Tops, Judy Garland, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, Buddy Holly, The Jackson Five, George Jones, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, The Mamas & The Papas, Bob Marley, Bill Monroe, Van Morrison, Nirvana, The Police, Smokey Robinson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, The Supremes, The Temptations, Conway Twitty, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, and The Who.
    --

  • For instance... the 'free' Limp Bizket tour. Alana Morrisete (or is it Cherly Crow?) getting stock, etc. The people already made it, so why give them a ton of money?

    Actually it was Napster that sponsored the Limp Bizkit tour. Alanis Morissettte did get quite a bit of MP3.com stock though, can't recall what exactly she did for the company.

  • But wouldn't this easily be solved by just putting the tax on the hard drive (or the "net", however you would do that)? Then the record companies couldn't extort money from these services and its users, because we will have already paid. As it is, I don't think hard drives are classified and taxed as recording devices...so the record industry can do whatever it wants. Put the tax on the hard drives, and then it sucks for them because they can't claim they're not being reimbursed for all that hypothetical loss of profit.

    This is completely besides my opinion that those taxes and assumption of profit as a right are rank and odious themselves.

  • Congratulations moderators... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You have succeeded in moderating up the goatse.cx troll. It's nice to know that know we are even letting AOL users moderate.

  • This is not a story to make jokes about. The ramifications of the licensing deals agreed to between MP3.Com and the recording companies could lead to a new era of information distribution methodology. The social impact of such a system would definitely not favour the individual on the side of the fence taken by the vast majority of citizens. What I mean is, while this might look good on the outside, think about what it really means: record labels controlling, what appears to be their content on the outside, could lead to them imposing stricter limitations on what can be done with the content in a newer, more dynamic distribution system. It would basically be like the difference between everyone owning a horse-carriage and being able to travel, and there being a sophisticated monorail system spanning the entire world, with cars big enough for everyone, but having an authenication system only allowing 5% of the world's population into it. Yes, this "deal" makes about as much sense as that.

  • SPRAYdio is a Swedish Internet radio station where the visitors choose music which then is placed in playlists. There are several rooms with different kinds of music in each.

    When they started out, they got a very good deal with STIM (the organization to which you pay a fee for playing music in public in Sweden), because STIM didn't really know what it was about and they had to do something.

    Now, more than a year or two later, Warner Music has decided to pull out of it, without much of an explanation. It seems they don't understand that they get free marketing...
  • But amazon has a vaguely realistic business plan.

    Bol.com are probably the only online bookstore capable of stealing their market and they still have some way to go.

    Amazon do at least sell things and have revenue. Mp3.com's business plan appears to be something akin to setting up a cd store which buys discs in in bulk and then gives them out for free.

    It just isn't viable.
  • I think this is absolutely the way to go. MP3s from Universal will still be traded through Gnutella or on Usenet or any other way that can be effectively anonymous, legal or no. My.MP3.com is going in the right direction for the legal means to distribute music by signing a few labels that will allow them to distribute.
    Throughout this Napster trial I've been hearing that widespread distribution of music over the net is the beginning of the end for the brick and mortar labels and records stores. Now that a legalized system has been developed, and if it is successful, I might start believing that.
    I'd also expect companies like UMC do something similar, since they can't sue it away.

  • Only about $350M left though.

    Read through some of the info at http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=MPPP&d=v1 [yahoo.com], don't know that their chances are too good, although most brokers seem to be saying buy or hold...

    see what happens in an hour when the market opens again.

  • How long before mp3.com burns out? (Score:5)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Monday September 11, 2000 @01:14AM (#789450) Homepage Journal
    The article mentions on going royalties being paid to the record companies.

    I have to wonder how long it will be before mp3.com's capital dries up. Considering their lawsuits have probably cost in the region of $0.5bn they surely cant have *that* much left.

    Also you can imagine the bandwidth charges they must be incurring by allowing users to stream 128kbit audio from them.

    Just how long can you keep afloat such a hugely loss making website in the hope that it will one day be profitable?

    Similary can anyone see any nice routes for how mp3.com could become profitable?
  • I don't understand how they were able to pay several hundred million dollars in fines/fees. I mean, where does that come from? That can't be ad revenue from running this service for how long? One year, maybe two? Where does that money come from?

  • you have a basic misunderstanding that screws up the rest of your thinking.

    the dot.com model is the same as any other startup business model: attract capital, spend it on productive assets, put off current profitability in favor of growth, then share future profits with investors. Much of the success of the model is based on first-mover advantages. When you are trying to achieve FMA, "lobbying for changes in the law" sure doesn't sound like it's always the smartest thing to do.

  • I would rather have seen them develop their unsigned artists. If you look around long enough, you see a bunch of pissed off artists talking about MP3.com selling out.

    For instance... the 'free' Limp Bizket tour. Alana Morrisete (or is it Cherly Crow?) getting stock, etc. The people already made it, so why give them a ton of money?

    I think it'd be great to see mp3.com become another label... one that chould shake the industry... not a service of distribution for the Big-5.

    Rader

  • Maybe finally the record labels are going to see that this is inevitable and will start cutting deals with mp3.com to get their music here. Hopefully they'll see that if you can't stop it, you might as well join it.

  • Re:Good deal (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Remember: It's usually easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission...
  • Seeing a correlation between dot-coms and lawsuits doesn't make dot-coms "bad". The Internet has created a new playing field. New companies have jumped in to define this new game. The establishment plays best on the old field and is resisting _any_ change. The same thing happened when records, tapes, radio, etc were created. It's just unfortunate that the establishment has enough power to erase what technology has made possible. If it doesn't make the rich and powerful more rich and more powerful then it won't happen. Right or wrong doesn't matter.

    MP3.com is a perfect example. Here is a well funded company trying to provide a real benefit to the customers of the big record companies. It's easy to argue that MP3.com creates sales for record companies. If I buy a CD and use MP3.com then I get more for the same price. The record company gets a nice chunk of cash and MP3.com gets tenths of cents from advertising. Sounds like a big win for everyone except MP3.com. Sounds like the record companies are doing the "cut off the nose thing" here.

    My guess is that pressure will only increase around this issue. Then some big CEO will say something equevalent to "Let them eat cake." and all hell will break loose. People will wake up to the fact that way too much money and power is going to these companies for something that has an incremental cost close to $0.

    Most industries continuously deliver more value for less price. Why not here? Why not look at that statistic?
  • With all these lawsuits, I'd rather it were "your.mp3.com" ;>
  • I think that MP3.com has a sound business model here. The lawsuits may kill it but I still think the recording industry is mad only because they didn't think of it first. If MP3.com survives and everyone but Universal is on board then how stupid will Universal feel?
  • Yeah, especially as that is how they started out, I'd imagine that when they started getting bigger they hired in a load of professional management types who buggered things up. I'd actually rather they did go out of business now, every cause needs martyrs who are unwilling to compromise their principles, the way things are going they're just going to become a digital outlet for the major labels, pimping the artists and overcharging the customers. And even worse the whole thing is probably going to die down now, there will still be a few 'activists' that refuse to buy CDs/go to movies etc, but as far as the more general public is concerned the matter is over, and not only that, but the Big-5 won, so they are the good guys now.
  • This looks good. MP3.com is working out flat-rate licensing deals with record companies. In the end, that's what's going to happen - flat-rate music, much like radio airplay. What's really happening is that the music industry is in transition from a pay-per-view model to a broadcast/advertising model.

    Note that this removes most of the need for the RIAA's more paranoid copy protection schemes.

    So we have new business models. Flat-rate downloadable music is here to stay, since some major music providers have agreed to it. For at least that part of the market, the legal problems are over. If Universal wants to stay with the old business model for a while, that's their option. That may or may not work. Much will depend on where new artists sign up. In time, Universal may end up being an archival service for music by dead people.

    Maybe product placement in music is the future:

    • Tortise Brand Pot Cleaner
      Specially Selected Pot Cleaner
      The best pot cleaner in the world
      Tortise Brand!

      • Shonen Knife

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