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Background
MP3.com is a website in nowadays owned and operated by CNET Networks. It is known for providing information on digital music, artists, songs, services, community, and technologies. MP3.com was founded in 1998 by Michael Robertson, as part of Z Company, which runs and operates a variety of websites (namely filez.com, websitez.com, sharepaper.com etc.). The idea of creation of a special website for free music downloading appeared from the search traffic analysis. It was noticed that in most cases internet users were searching for "mp3" (this format for audio files is very easy to use and for the most part the quality is pretty good).
As of March 2000 MP3.com hosted songs from a wide range of artists. There was no charge for downloading music from; however, it required users to sign up with an e-mail address and online advertisements were commonplace across the site.
Issues
Entertainment and media industry is profitable and extremely prosperous. Music recording is one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Until MP3 entered the market and became the leading and premier audio format for using and distributing music, there was complicated and expensive way of delivering music products to the customers.
The major issue that has been faces by MP3.com is copyright piracy. Due to recent events (Napster) artists and record companies say that they have been losing
money due to the pirated music that is floating around on the web. There have been court cases against these companies that offer the peer to peer network software, but the problem still exists. This issue has two sides. On one hand artist would like to receive payment if their music is being shared on-line, but on th ...