MP3.com founder announces online music store plans
7 February 2005
The founder of the former number one music site on the web has announced plans for a new online music store.
Michael Robertson is hoping for a comeback with the new service, due to launch next week.
Mr Robertson, now chief executive of desktop-Linux distributor Linspire, plans to unveil his new MP3Tunes.com site at the Desktop Summit conference in San Diego on February 10th.
The internet entrepreneur is launching his latest creation with his own money. The new website will offer music in MP3 format, without copyright-protection technology, meaning that music can be played on any device that supports the standard and can be copied on an unlimited number of CDs.
None of the major record labels have licensed their music to Mr Robertson, who has instead built a catalogue of 200,000 tracks licensed from small labels and independent artists.
The site is expected to struggle in a market that already includes established sites such as Apples successful iTunes service.
Mr Robertson, who started mp3.com in 1997, believes that the big sites are doing consumers a disservice by supporting their own technology and placing restrictions on how music tracks can be used.
"Our message to consumers is, if you pay for music, you should be able to copy it to any device that you want," he said. "There's a paradox today that if you steal your (MP3) music from file-sharing sites, then you can use it anyway you want. But if you pay for the music, then you get it with all kinds of restrictions and limitations."
However, research into online music suggests that users do not mind purchasing music for a particular hardware device, such as the iPod.
Robertson plans to sell individual songs on MP3Tunes.com for 88 cents, and albums for $8.88, less than most online music stores.
Mr Robertson's MP3.com portal was the top music site on the web with three million hits a month. In 2000 a federal court ruled that a portion of the service violated copyright law by allowing songs from commercial CDs to be downloaded and Mr Robertson sold MP3.com to Vivendi Universal, which sold it in 2003 to C/Net.
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