The Gift of the Magi Revisited

My.mp3.com Gets Its Christmas Wish

Service Opens Today

With the bulk of its major legal battles behind it, online music firm Mp3.com announced it would relaunch its My.MP3.com service today, December 5, 2000 with both paid and free versions. The new paid My.MP3.com service will charge users $49.95 a year and allow them to store as many as 500 compact disks’ worth of songs, the company said. The free version will allow storage of just 25 compact disks and will be supported by advertising, said Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Robertson.

It seems Universal Music, the RIAA and the other major labels are now ready to give Mp3.com a Christmas Gift. But, unlike the selfless wife in "The Gift of the Magi," they plan to get a huge gift in return. All will receive royalties for every upload and play. And Universal hope to get the biggest gift of all, a stake in the enormous profit they envision from the success of the service. But, in order to get this stream of income, My.Mp3.com will need to charge for its formerly free service.

The new My.Mp3.com service will offer consumers a chance to buy a CD at full retail, verify the purchase by computer, and then allow the consumer to pay $49.95 annually to listen, but never download, a poor quality copy of the CD. Originally a free and rather novel service, it has been mostly dormant in recent months while the company waged a legal battle against the major record labels and publishers. Not content to sell the music, the labels had filed copyright suits against MP3.com for using their songs in the original version of the service.

The service as originally planned by Mp3.com might have provided a real bonus to the record companies because of tie-ins with on-line retailers. My.mp3.com allowed instant "listening only" access to music from the moment it was PURCHASED!!! A wonderful idea to spur on-line CD sales, which have struggled because of the desire for most consumers for instant gratification.

By killing the service, the RIAA and major record labels actually forced consumers into the open arms of Napster, where music could be accessed instantly (and for free).

The San Diego-based Mp3.com is now able to restore the offering now because it has struck legal deals with all of the major labels and publishers. While minor groups remain in legal actions, continued settlements are expected with those groups.

Mp3.com believes the new service will once again give consumers flexibility to listen to their music in digital form. “Anywhere they want to get access to their music, they can,” CEO Robertson announced.

So how does the rewrite of the Gift of the Magi go? Lets see... New husband (record companies) forces wife (Mp3.com) to cut hew hair for the money (royalties). Then he divorces her when he realizes just how ugly she is without her hair and discovers just how long it will take her to grow in another "crop."

Wife realizes she should have stayed with first husband (unsigned artists who made up the original mp3.com) rather than flirting with wealthy strangers.

The Wiz is having trouble seeing this as the new Christmas Classic.