I didn’t do too much hardcore surfing when I was younger. It mostly consisted of Shenmue Dojo, a fansite dedicated to one of my favorite game franchises ever (R.I.P. Shenmue), and mp3.com.

I regularly visited mp3.com to discover new bands and listen to songs that I hadn’t downloaded for whatever reason. The best part was, to me, finding old demos of bands who had either changed names or abandoned their mp3.com profiles.

If you remember mp3.com then you know that it isn’t the mp3.com that’s up now. Now, it’s a digital music store sort of like iTunes. Back in the day it was more like PureVolume or Myspace, in that bands would have profiles and put their recordings up for the world to enjoy. It was PureVolume before PureVolume was PureVolume.

If my memory serves me correctly it just sort of died. I remember visiting the site one day and being met with a white screen with the mp3.com logo on it. They might have gone out differently, but that’s how I remember it.

Of course, being the amateur journalist I am, I had to do some research.

…ok, fine, so I went to Wikipedia.

More or less, mp3.com got sued after launching their My.MP3.com service, which gave users the feature to create playlists by uploading music and allowed their peers listen to them. That lawsuit, coupled with the impending dot-com bust, meant doom for mp3.com.

The site was then sold to Vivendi Universal, who, after attempts to try and expand the site, sold the rights to CNET, creators of download.com, who dismantled the site and put up the current incarnation of mp3.com.

The rights to all the uploaded music and user profiles was given to Trusonic, who founded GarageBand.com, which used much of the technology formerly utilized by the original mp3.com.

So there you have it, the story of mp3.com, the godfather of today’s online music community landscape. All you youngins know who you have to thank for Myspace.com’s music section, PureVolume.com, and GarageBand.com.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3.com