{"id":1176,"date":"2007-04-13T14:05:08","date_gmt":"2007-04-13T19:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/04\/13\/once-more-into-the-breach-michael-robertson\/"},"modified":"2007-04-13T14:05:08","modified_gmt":"2007-04-13T19:05:08","slug":"once-more-into-the-breach-michael-robertson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/04\/13\/once-more-into-the-breach-michael-robertson\/","title":{"rendered":"Once more into the breach, Michael Robertson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Robertson has been a thorn in the side of the music business longer than just about anybody, including Steve Jobs and Shawn &#8220;Napster&#8221; Fanning. He created the original MP3.com (history <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/MP3.com\">here<\/a>), which, like Napster, was shut down by a record industry lawsuit, and more recently created Mp3tunes.com &#8212; which allows you to upload music and listen to it through the browser.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"left\" id=\"image1177\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/michael.jpg?w=525\" alt=\"michael.jpg\" \/>Now he&#8217;s taking another crack at the industry with the launch of something called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anywherecd.com\/mp3\/home1\">AnywhereCD<\/a>. But before the new venture was even a day old, Michael&#8217;s plans, which he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelrobertson.com\/index.php\">writes about<\/a> on his blog, had hit a major snag. The service is designed to allow music fans to buy a CD and instantly get access to mp3 files of the same songs &#8212; but without necessarily taking physical delivery of the CD. This apparently got at least one label upset: Warner Music came out within hours of Michael&#8217;s announcement and <a href=\"http:\/\/investing.reuters.co.uk\/news\/articleinvesting.aspx?type=allBreakingNews&amp;storyID=2007-04-13T001948Z_01_N12370215_RTRIDST_0_WARNERMUSIC-COPYPROTECTION.XML\">ordered him<\/a> to remove any WMG files from the service &#8212; even though all the appropriate royalties would be paid <em>as though<\/em> someone had actually bought the CD. Warner said in a statement that AnywhereCD was selling its music in a manner that &#8220;flagrantly&#8221; violated their agreement.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m continually struck by the bizarre contortions the industry forces people to jump through. The original MP3.com had a service called My.MP3.com, which allowed you to listen to music through the browser after verifying that you owned the original CD &#8212; which I thought was brilliant. It was shut down too (MP3tunes.com requires you to upload all the music before you can listen to it). Warner&#8217;s response seems particularly out of step given that some labels like EMI are offering straightforward non-DRM files.<\/p>\n<p>Is the record industry doomed to just never get it?<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Robertson has been a thorn in the side of the music business longer than just about anybody, including Steve Jobs and Shawn &#8220;Napster&#8221; Fanning. He created the original MP3.com (history here), which, like Napster, was shut down by a record industry lawsuit, and more recently created Mp3tunes.com &#8212; which allows you to upload music &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/04\/13\/once-more-into-the-breach-michael-robertson\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Once more into the breach, Michael Robertson&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}