Greed is God

November 23, 2003 4:26 PM

delenda mp3.com est"Vivendi Universal recently sold the MP3.com domain to CNet. However, they're not selling the approximately one million songs on the archive. (recorded by over 250,000 artists) Instead, they're simply destroying it as of December 3. MP3.com's founder and former CEO, Michael Robertson, is pleading with Vivendi to allow the Internet Archive to preserve the songs." (via Slashdot)
posted by kablam (16 comments total)

Please see:

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/29569

Now I'll go back to my headache...
posted by datawrangler at 4:39 PM on November 23, 2003

So desperate to call 'double post', are we, Datawrangler, that we're not even R-ing The F-ing A?
posted by armoured-ant at 4:48 PM on November 23, 2003

Technically, the link isn't "via Slashdot", it is Slashdot.

Anyway, back to the thread, it's nice he cares, but really, if people want to post their stuff they can. I've had music on mp3.com for years, and I'm sorry to see it go. But I've got my own site too where people can access my music.
posted by Outlawyr at 5:45 PM on November 23, 2003

You know, the original authors of everything at the Library of Congress probably still have a copy of their work. So it's OK if budget cuts lead to a bonfire there, right?

There is independent value in that collection that needs to be maintained!

And I'm saying this as someone with material on there.

--Dan
posted by effugas at 6:32 PM on November 23, 2003

what would be really cool is if it all got destroyed, and thousands of artists (not to all those kiddies with garage "bands") got to experience first hand the value a corporate entity places on creativity. that'd help put to rest the silly "gosh, everything is free on the internet" meme to death, and give them all a nice preview of the world to come.
posted by quonsar at 7:47 PM on November 23, 2003

quonsar, mp3.com was a corporation.

You confused me.
posted by shepd at 10:28 PM on November 23, 2003

"that'd help put to rest the silly 'gosh, everything is free on the internet' meme to death"

Most things on the internet are free if you know where to go and what to do.
posted by Keyser Soze at 12:39 AM on November 24, 2003

quonsar, mp3.com was a corporation.

see! :-)
posted by quonsar at 12:55 AM on November 24, 2003

Most things on the internet are free if you know where to go and what to do.

The End of Free
posted by armoured-ant at 3:44 AM on November 24, 2003

On the one hand, it would really be a tragedy to see one of the largest repositories of essentially amateur music destroyed like this.

On the other hand, some of that stuff was just plain bad. I love the idea of mp3.com, but I can't say I actually listened to it that much.

Therein lies the problem, I guess.
posted by oissubke at 5:17 AM on November 24, 2003

I don't know -- I found a lot of really high quality field recordings on mp3.com that I really enjoy. Also, my old band, razor 18, had our tracks on there and someone picked one up for a compilation, which is pretty neat. I also found a number of good bands there. If you think that a music repository ought to be destroyed because most of the music in it is bad... I'd start with a wrecking ball and Tower Records myself.
posted by n9 at 7:05 AM on November 24, 2003

Instead of just focusing on the downside of this situation, can someone think of a better mousetrap? That is, if someone else creates a huge online library of music, how can it be more intelligently accessed?
The "Dewey Decimal" approach may work for books, but it has some serious problems with music. Music "genres" suck as catagories. "I'd like to look at all 50,000 major blues artists, please", is not something most people would say.

Perhaps a non-hierarchical organization, a "fuzzy logic" setup, let the computer do the work for you: "You have selected 'Us and Them' by Pink Floyd. The following selections and artists have a similar mood to them..."
(Indicating both copyrighted and non-copyrighted works, the latter, if available, for download.)

Does this sound workable? How would you like to search the next archive for new tracks and artists?
posted by kablam at 9:55 AM on November 24, 2003

I didn't know so many people here had stuff posted on mp3.com like I do.
posted by laz-e-boy at 2:07 PM on November 24, 2003

Apologies for the self-link. Don't worry, it'll be gone in a few days.
posted by laz-e-boy at 2:08 PM on November 24, 2003

Ahhh, most of the books in the Library of Alexandria probably weren't worth reading, anyway.
posted by webmutant at 2:14 PM on November 24, 2003

I didn't know so many people here had stuff posted on mp3.com like I do.

I have stuff posted on there under two names. I'll spare you a link so you wan't have to suffer it. :-)
posted by oissubke at 5:33 AM on November 25, 2003