MP3.com, Michael Robertson’s watershed indie warehouse, rose, crested, and fell. Then the domain and other assets were bought by CNET. Then darkness and confusion reigned upon all the land, causing gnashing of teeth among musicians and rending of garments among their fans. Now, a glimmer of light. One of the most respected indie-music sites, GarageBand.com (not without its own ups and downs, having risen from the dead once already), has licensed some 85 percent of MP3.com’s old music content from its present owners, a consortium of ex-Universal execs called TrusSonic. Confusing? Eh, don’t sweat the details. Keep your eye on GarageBand to see what it does with the word’s biggest collection of medioc— ...I mean, independantly produced music.
CNET Music Service Begins Beta Uploads.
One hour after the report of GarageBand licensing most of the old MP3.com musical stash (click here or scroll down the page to see that post), CNET sent an e-mail through its mailing list announcing the beta launch of music.download.com. Musicians may begin uploading material (music files, bios, pics, etc.) immediately. CNET owns the MP3.com domain and miscellaneous assets. Apparently, CNET has no immediate plan to revive the domain, and it does not own the music files previously hosted at MP3.com. [The Digital Music Weblog]
Commentary later - after the dust settles.
[Marc's Voice]