Spirit of original mp3.com returns

The fantastic thing about it was the bit where you could wade through thousands of tunes unknown bands had submitted to the site and download any that took your fancy.

You could search by genre or, most interestingly, by location. Bands from all over the globe submitted their offerings. My local favourite was from just down the road in Hitchin, whence the Bleach Boys' "You C*nt" emanated. An interesting little title and a fine example of 90s punk rock if ever there was one.

And you didn't just get music. At the time I used it, the war in our Fudo's back yard was drawing to a close and audio clips from the former Yugoslavia of bombs dropping and the distant sound of rattling machine guns brought some of the realities of that conflict into our office. These were made by a guy just opening his window and recording the local ambiance. It made you think.

Once you'd heard a tune you liked you could often buy an album by the artist through the site. I bought an album by Gretchen Lieberum, some US jazzy crooner. I believe it cost around ten dollars. It arrived within a week and was surprisingly excellent. I was hooked.

It's estimated that there were around 1.7 million such recordings on the site, made by around 250,000 artists. These, it seems, were all deleted.

But now some of those old tunes and aural delights have been dug up again, to be resurrected on the site www.mp3isback.com.

An outfit called Garageband runs the site. They hooked up with Trusonic Inc., a firm set up by former Vivendi employees. Vivendi was the firm that acquired MP3.com after it was crippled by legal actions. The company, however, didn't get the information pertaining to the bands that had served up their music on the site. That passed to Trusonic.

And now, through the hook-up with Trusonic, Garageband reckons it has been able to get the details of around 85 per cent of the bands that were on the site and is contacting them to get the service back up and running. Although the Wall Street Journal reported that by last Friday, only 1,440 of 33,040 artists contacted had joined the new service.

Of course, we guess that our Yugoslavian friends may prove difficult to track down.

Late last year CNET bought the MP3.com domain name and trademark from Vivendi. Now as it prepares to relaunch MP3.com it faces competition from the Garageband outfit.

So, while the established record industry grumbles and lashes out over music file sharing it also managed to stifle such alternative music distribution networks like MP3.com.

But listening to the unsigned and unheard of bands on the old site you could feel the creativity and verve that many of these acts had compared to the pallid pop the industry would have us buy. Of course, there was plenty of rubbish there too, but once downloaded and listened to, a quick press of the delete key dealt with that.

MP3isback.com may yet be a pale imitator of the original, but to me this is an interesting development. The more diversity the better, as far as I'm concerned. And, of course, the RIAA can't do a thing about it. µ