Taken from Sopie's Corner --- MP3.com:

CNET Networks, Inc announced today that it has acquired certain assets of MP3.com, Inc.

Please be advised that on Tuesday, December 2, 2003 at 12:00 PM PST the MP3.com website will no longer be accessible in its current form.

Following a transition period, CNET Networks, Inc. plans to introduce new and enhanced artist services. If you would like to receive email updates on these new services and notification when they are available, as well as an invitation to their special artists-only preview, please sign up here.

Your personal information, music, images, related content or other information will not be transferred to CNET Networks, Inc. or any other third party.

MP3.com's content administration tools will remain available until the site is redirected on December 2, 2003. Please note, however, that promptly following the removal of the MP3.com website, all content will be deleted from our servers and all previously submitted tapes, CD-ROMs and other media in our possession will be destroyed. We recommend that you make alternative content hosting arrangements as soon as practicable.

Please remember to update or remove all links and references to the URL www.mp3.com. Additionally if you would like a historical record of your page, we recommend that you capture screen shots of the page as well as your artist statistics pages since they will no longer be available once the site goes offline.

MP3.com stopped collecting monthly fees for Gold and Platinum Artist Service subscriptions as of November 3, 2003. For any monthly Gold or Platinum Artist Service subscription fees MP3.com received during the period beginning October 13, 2003 and ending November 2, 2003, MP3.com will be issuing a refund that will be prorated to reflect a termination of the subscription as of November 2, 2003. For any previously paid annual Gold and Platinum subscription fees MP3.com has received during 2003, MP3.com will be issuing a refund that will be prorated to reflect a termination of the subscription as of November 2, 2003. Any artists who subscribed to the Platinum or Gold Artist Service after November 2, 2003 will receive a full refund of any fees paid.

If you subscribe to any other MP3.com services, you will receive separate email messages with specific information about refunds and service availability.

Participants in the truSONIC Business Music Service program will be receiving an email update about the process for their continued participation in that program.

All content uploads will cease immediately. Approvals of previously uploaded content will continue through Friday, November 14, 2003.

CDs will be available for purchase through Monday, November 17, 2003 at 12:00 PM PST.

MP3.com will perform a final artist accounting and check distribution on or around December 1, 2003. Any artist account with a balance of at least $25.00 will qualify to receive a payment in the final artist accounting (reduced from the usual requirement of $50.00). Payment of CD royalties will be included in the final artist accounting. If you anticipate a payment, please verify and update your artist account and contact information no later than November 20, 2003. Click here for help updating your contact information.

Please be sure to check the Sophie message board and System Service Report (SSR) for further updates.

On behalf of all of us at MP3.com we thank you for your patronage and continued support. It has been a privilege to host one of the largest and most diverse collections of music in the world. MP3.com wishes to express its sincere thanks to each of you for making our website an important part of your musical journey. We wish you continued success.

Sincerely,
MP3.com

Hurry, everybody who knows of a band on MP3.com contact them and let them know about DMusic.

Then again, CNET's got it. Maybe they'll return it to what it was originally intended for. After all, download.com is still a good place to visit.

From what I've been told all CNET wanted was the hardware -- the storage... so the software and the music will all be destroyed....

this is horse crap thay just took one of the main indapendent out lets and shut them down think the magors are fealing the pain of indapentdent artests now?

well vivinda or what ever thair name is ju7st struck a big blow back at us and bleave me when i say us

thay just gave even more controle to them selfs and the other big 4

this is horrable

well there are plenty of music sites for indies to upload thier music... so this is just the first of many other RIAA(Major Label control sites going down) Too bad DMusic didnt buy Mp3. con domain name so evertime someones searches for it then it would redirect them here to DMusic.

I removed my mp3.com sites half a year ago, after hearing about Vivendi taking over the site and adding further restrictions for the "free" members. Now I'm using DMusic.

Horray! The greedy so-and-so's deserve and had it coming.

Part of me is glad that mp3.com is getting taken down.They had the nerve to make free artists take their music down and restrict them to 3 songs only?!If we had money to pay these sites then we wouldn't need to be on them.To top it off, they'd make you wait about 2 weeks before approving your songs before putting them online.They went from being ok to being the worst.Although i'm not too familiar with dmusic,i feel more at home here than mp3.com they only cared about the paying artists.Although my stuff is on their site still,i feel no pain watching them sink.i don't know cnet's purpose,but whatever it is, i doubt that they'd be able to do any better.

What a twisted and strange saga this has been.

C-Ya..
that's what ya get for stupid business moves

koemoejoe is spot on "just took one of the main indapendent out"

I think the time is getting closer for many of the independent sites to begin to come together, offer a real united alternative.

Fossil said..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From what I've been told all CNET wanted was the hardware -- the storage... so the software and the music will all be destroyed....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why on earth would they do that, the content was worth more than the hardware, I may be wrong but I think a line has been drawn in the sand
here.

What does everyone think ?

Well, I just want to wish the best for all the people visiting mp3.com, for all the men & women working for mp3.com and for all the artist I had the privilege to shared with.

Good redince I say. Although now that cnet has it who knows what will happen. I don't agree I think download.com is a horible service. It started to go down hill when they tried gathering demographic information on all its users before downloads could proceed. Not to mention how many software apps are on download.com that are labeled freeware or even free trial and they end up being something different. Slow downloads. Adds up the butt. And web bugs. Nah I'm all set with download.com. Check out;

www.sourceforge.com

Everything there is open-source. There are no hidden fees and adds are at a minimal. And 99.9% of the software is better than the commercial equivalants.
I think someone should start a website with commercial content alternatives. Such as indie bands, open-source software, free multiplayer gaming. Stuff like that. It can be so hard trying to sift through the masses of commercial content on the net to find something clean.

The real mp3.com died some time ago. Like a brain-dead patient on life-support, the plug has been finally and mercifully pulled.

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy (a former mp3.com artist from the days when there was false hope there.)

CNet (computer network) is really more about computers than music, so, it's not a surprise to me that the hardware was more important to them than content on the drives. Plus, probably didn't want any legal hassles over anything...just delete the files and repurpose the boxes...that's what they would say.

So, the rest of us that are owed less than $25 will never be paid?

This pisses me off. Vivendi/Universal sold my music online and never paid me for it. Now it appears they never will.

Is this not copyright infringement? 11 songs. $150,000 each. Vivendi owes me a million dollars.

The headline for this article should say "Vivendi screws thousands of independent artists."

And they did it for profit.

Good ridance, MP3 turned to crap years ago any way, and it is time it went away. This is what happens when music companies take over a web site it becomes junk.

I'm taking this kind of thing as public as I can. They are stifling the independent music scene a little at a time until it's completely dominated by them. Well, this isn't going to happen. They talk about putting people out of business... pay them better. The independent artists are the ones who really suffer. Limited to venues that allow independent music, they only have a small selection compared to how far they can go with how much money they make. We need a truly official coalition of artists against the record industry so everyone knows where we stand and want to be taken seriously. I'll start a website where I'll make a mission statement and whatnot, then collect a list of independent artists who'd like to join. Give me a day or so... maybe I'll have it up tonight.

I don't understand how they can just up and say they arent paying. Don't you have a contract with them? Although I must say it serves you right for signing on with vivendi.

NOws the time for DM to jump on it and create a cd program for it's artists. I'd much rather give DM the money to create my CD's than a mogul run site. Mp3.com hasn't been a good place for Indies for a while. All of you that have sites on Mp3 go to the forum on Mp3.com amd flood it with links to DM

George, I defer to leflaw on the matter, but, if you had a contract of any kind with Universal/Vivendi, and they sold your songs, and received benefit of sales, and you are owed money pursuant to the provisions of your contract, and have a good faith reason for believing they owe you, I would write a letter of demand, send it certified return receipt requested (include the CRRR number inside your letter) and mail the letter of demand to the CEO of Vivendi/Universal. Keep a copy. Give them ten (10) business days to remit payment in full and list your songs and your copyright notice...

is it infringement? Hmmm...did Vivendi make unauthorized copies and distribute them? If they didn't make "unauthorized" copies...probably not...so you're probably looking at a breach of contract action...but again...
leflaw will have a better word on this one.
~Code

purfus -- fair warning... today isn't the day to piss me off.

Number one -- I left mp3.com after only a few months when they cut everyone back to three songs, even if you were selling product through them.

Number 2 -- Those DAM CDs they were selling gave the artist $3 a pop for each one sold. If you were ever a member of mp3.com and sold less than 9 copies, you will never be paid for the copies you did sell.

They only owe me $3. They owe Schmoo about $20.

Multiply this by about 100,000 independent artists and Vivendi just stole probably $1-2 million from the indie community.

It's not the $3 that pisses me off, either. It's the fact that they are suing kids for sharing music for free at the same time they did the same goddamn thing for profit.

But they're part of the RIAA and we're illegitimate so the law doesn't give a flying rat's ass.

They were supposed to pay these "insignificant" balances when they did a periodic full accounting.

This is the "final" accounting and they decide to keep the money.

French pirate bastards.

"MP3.com will perform a final artist accounting and check distribution on or around December 1, 2003. Any artist account with a balance of at least $25.00 will qualify to receive a payment in the final artist accounting (reduced from the usual requirement of $50.00). Payment of CD royalties will be included in the final artist accounting. If you anticipate a payment, please verify and update your artist account and contact information no later than November 20, 2003."

How do I update my contact information?


In order to get paid, it is imperative that your contact information in your Artist Admin area be correct.

1. Log in to your Master Artist Admin by clicking Artist Login from the homepage.
2. Click on your Artist name.
3. Click on the edit link next to Contact and Payment Info in the upper right corner of the page.
http://help.mp3.com/help/article/general_update.html

It doesn't matter if your contact information is correct if they only owe you $20.

You're still not getting paid.

sorry...you said less than 25.00, should have read closer..blame it on the fact i'm a year older ...and thus a year dumber ....
~Code

They were authorized to sell them. But they were required to pay for doing so.

If they don't pay, they directly infringed upon my copyright by selling my songs for profit and not paying me.

11 songs. Up to $150,000 each, with punitive damages, of course. $1.65 million.

sorry, you're right George..
oh well..and so it goes....

So if the other thousands of indies who just got shafted file a class action suit, we should own Vivendi by 2006.

go get 'em George

sounds like a plan...leflaw could do some serious buttkicking on such a suit I imagine....

Code, from your other article...

Oh, and with criminal copyright infringement, you only have to get some sort of financial benefit in return

George, you are right, they still owe me and Electric Gypsy about $20. Unfortunately, I am sure that in the online original contract with mp3.com, somewhere within, it states that "in the event mp3.com is sold/terminated" then any money owed under a certain amount is null and void...

I have no hope or belief that we will ever see our $20 or so bucks.

(BTW, how did you know we were still owed some money from them? We pulled our material from mp3.com a long time ago... are they STILL displaying info on us even tho when we pulled out from them we DEMANDED they remove anything and everything Electric Gypsy? Or had I mentioned that to you that they owed us? I may have said that to you or others here/elsewhere, just not sure... but IF you found out that datum from visiting mp3.com today, I would be VERY INTERESTED.

Shmoo

You told me.

Oh.

I forgot.

(Darn, thought I had em on something

Shmoo

BTW, that money owed me is mostly from the DAM CD's I purchased MYSELF

Irony, oh Irony

Shmoo

We all got took for a ride by mp3.com. Whenever ANOTHER person/entity/company/corporation makes money from an artist/performer/creator's work... CREATOR AND BUYER BEWARE!

Kinda sucks when creator and consumer are one and the same... In this somewhat insignificant case, only the middleman wins.

Funny (not ha ha funny as much as sad sad funny.)

Shmoo

I've got the mission statement written and should have the site up in a couple hours if all goes well.

This keeping of under 20 bucks adds up. It reminds me of a computer program they talked about in Office Space (based on one that really was used) which would churn tenths of cents generating in banking transactions into a fake account, and doing a daily compounding of interest...it generated millions in no time...so, I imagine these

geez..it cut off my post

I remember in one of the Superman movies, Richard Pryor played a computer geek who figured out how to get all those tenths of a cent "sent" to his own bank account...

Code, the corporations musta saw that movie too.

Maybe we ARE on to something!

Shmoo

Vivendi owes me around $20 or so...

All of the RIAA major labels collectively owe me around $12.95 or so (we actually won a class action to get THAT amount) that I have not yet seen hide nor hair of...

Things that make ya go hmm...

Shmoo

johnnygnote
Date: November 14, 2003 @ 10:03 AM
NOws the time for DM to jump on it and create a cd program for it's artists. I'd much rather give DM the money to create my CD's than a mogul run site. Mp3.com hasn't been a good place for Indies for a while. All of you that have sites on Mp3 go to the forum on Mp3.com amd flood it with links to DM


Do it!!

All independent artists screwed by this deal needs to file a class action lawsuit to prevent the sale until everyone is paid in full. The sale should also be prevented on grounds of AntiTrust violations.

anyone interested in organizing an online petition?

actually, nm.

R.I.P Mp3.Com. It used to be a good service... Too bad it ended at the hands of the RIAA.

Hey don't get pissed man. I'm simply pointing out the obvious. Sign a deal with the devil and you will get burned. I've hated MP3.com since my firewall first layed eyes on em. I think vivendi are just a bunch of blood suckers. I hope you all can get a big class action case against them. Also that is a lot of money and if they continued to operate they probably still would have had some reliance to pay that money, especially if the indie band had more time to sell the minimum. But probably their financial outlook was grim and they were able to save those millions by getting rid of that reliance to pay, which is probably why they sold. It was the more profitable decision. Thats pretty shady business tho, if their arent laws against it there should be. And there should also be accounting practices to prove it.

I submitted news about my new organization. Problem: I forgot the link. It's ciaari.tk. I'll post it underneath the article if no one adds it.

I do feel this is sad news, even if, like so many people I saw this coming too.
I guess these "big bucks bar-stewards" never could understand those two words "Community" and "free". (The rot set in with Vivendi).

I'd still like to send a big "Thank you" to the original people who set up the site. It achieved really great things - especially for minority interest music like Folk. I made so many contacts and friends through the site - even if I never did get to the fifty bucks I would have needed to get my check

I enjoyed my time there and feel the death of the site is one more nail in the coffin of the internet as the greatest people driven revolution since the hippies rejected Vietnam and Materialism. The Stalins of the Revolution have moved in and this is their latest purge.

Long live Dmusic and the other sites that still hold the banners high.

Fraternally,

Berni "three-chords" Armstrong

From what I read CNET is going to relaunch MP3.com as more of a information music service than a download music service.

True CNET deals more with computers, so I gather they are trying to deversify into other areas to satisfy there shareholders.

MP3.com wasn't ever that good, it looked cool, then got sued, and then kinda sucked, I like Dmusic 1 million times better.

--undeath-- why does your link
ciaari.tk. =
Connection Rejected: 66.28.153.28 - fake files (cogent host) (11-15-2003 @ 01:59:20)
Why is this rejected by peer guardian.

I don't know why it's rejected. There's no reason for it to be.