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As noted in this morning's reboot, [MP3.com][1] is back from the dead and has reopening its servers to audio uploads. The landmark site is in no small part responsible for ushering in the online music era we've all come to know and love.
MP3.com, founded in 1997 by Michael Robertson, once had one of the largest collections of downloadable music on the net. A series of lawsuits forced MP3.com to pay out millions in copyright infringement damages. After being acquired by Universal Music in 2001 it was later sold to its current owner, CNET, in 2003.
However CNET only acquired the domain name not the millions of files once hosted on MP3.com's servers. CNET had transformed MP3.com into a music news and editorial site, but now the site is once again offering audio uploads for aspiring bands.
MP3.com is now offering band profiles, 100 MB of audio storage, and software to upload and edit music, videos, and photos. There's also a new Flash audio player that creates and saves playlists.
The feature set of the redesign seems targeted at going after MySpace Music, but having browsed around the site for the last hour, as much as I hate to admit it, from a band's point of view, I think MySpace is better.
The pages lack the customization features of MySpace (though the defaults look better than most MySpace pages) and the emphasis is less organic, community-based. MP3.com tries to integrate established artists with unknowns and claims to put them on equal footing, but in the end if comes off more like your favorite local band hired some slick PR company to turn them into an pseudo-established artist.
Like many CNET properties MP3.com feels like it's trying to do too much. And the advertising is prolific and annoying.
I want to be excited about MP3.com's redesign and new features, but frankly I found it less than compelling as a way to discover new bands.
[1]: http://www.mp3.com/ "MP3.com"
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