Em-Pee-Three

September 27, 2009 3:29 PM

A new version of MP3.com?

I was answering this question and was reminded of how MP3.com used to be a few years ago. It was a site where musicians could upload MP3s and it was well indexed and stuff.

Is there an alternative to that these days?

posted by sycophant to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Here are a few related though not quite identical question threads

One
Two
Three

Another community based site I don't think was mentioned in any of those. Last.fm also allows artist uploads in their Label accounts.

The prevalence of social networking sites seems to have significantly displaced the market for a music-file-only type of service. There are some others in those first three linked threads I haven't checked out yet though so maybe the perfect service is still out there.
posted by nanojath at 4:13 PM on September 27, 2009

Response by poster: I guess my question was a little ambiguious on how I wanted to use it. I am no musician, but I used to visit MP3.com to listen to what people were making, and on a couple of occasions approached artists for permission to use a track or two in something I was doing.

Paul Spaeth was an artist who I first encountered on MP3.com - he was making incredible orchestral pieces on his own.

That Sixty One site looks pretty interesting.
posted by sycophant at 4:24 PM on September 27, 2009

I used to use mp3.com the same way you did, sycophant - the61 has been the closest thing I've foundthat gives me the same experience. When it comes to exploring music, it's hard to beat. Last.fm and Pandora strike me as too focused on "what are you already listening to, because we can recommend some things you might otherwise like".

The game elements (the quests, the "reputation", etc) are just icing on an otherwise delicious cake.
posted by Remy at 4:38 PM on September 27, 2009