After Three-Year Hiatus, MP3.com Founder to Announce His Return to Music
Business at Desktop Summit
SAN DIEGO, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael Robertson, the founder and
former CEO of MP3.com, will announce next week that he is starting a new
digital music company called MP3tunes. The company will focus on music
products and services with an emphasis on the MP3 format to maximize
interoperability and consumer choice. Over the coming months, MP3tunes will
make several new products available online including a hardware device,
software products and an online music store. Robertson will officially
announce the new company at the Desktop Summit, February 9-11 at the Del Mar
Fairgrounds in San Diego (http://www.desktopsummit.com).
"When I started MP3.com, the term 'MP3' was an obscure acronym
recognizable only by geeks," Robertson said. "Back then, we had to battle for
the legality of MP3 players. But because of those early efforts, consumers
now have a spectacular array of portable players to choose from.
"Today, certain market forces are trying to drive consumers away from MP3
towards proprietary systems, which lock out some consumers and force everyone
to buy a particular company's player or software program. I wanted consumers
to have more options, so I felt compelled to reenter the music space to bring
the limelight back to MP3."
Robertson will unveil MP3tune's first service -- an online music store
focusing on high-quality music downloads -- at the Desktop Summit. Unlike
other popular music stores, MP3tunes will offer all tracks without digital
rights management (DRM). This ensures that paying customers can use the music
they purchase on any player or computer, as well as make unlimited copies of
their songs and burn their music onto CDs.
The founding of MP3tunes comes three years after Robertson stepped down as
the CEO of MP3.com. San Diego-based MP3.com was founded in 1997 and grew to
nearly 300 employees, becoming the largest digital music site on the Web with
more than 1,000,000 songs from 250,000 artists and hundreds of thousands of
unique daily visitors. Vivendi Universal purchased the profitable company in
2001 for $372 million in stock and cash.
MP3tunes is the third venture for Robertson since he sold MP3.com. In
2001, Robertson founded Linspire, Inc. (http://www.linspire.com), a company that
produces the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, which has been gaining
market share from the popular Microsoft Windows. In 2003, he founded
SIPphone, Inc. (http://www.sipphone.com), a VoIP technology company that competes
with traditional phone systems.
For further information please contact: Heather MacKenzie, Public
Relations, +1-858-587-6700 ext. 263, pr@linspireinc.com, for MP3tunes.
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