 |
Michael Robertson to Launch New Digital Music Venture, MP3tunes
After Three-Year Hiatus, MP3.com Founder to Announce his Return to
Music Business at Desktop Summit
SAN DIEGO, February 2, 2005 - 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 (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. (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. (www.sipphone.com), a VoIP technology company
that competes with traditional phone systems.
For more information, please contact:
Heather MacKenzie
Public Relations
858-587-6700, ext. 263
858-587-8095 Fax
pr@mp3tunes.com
Click here for full archive.
|
|
|
|
