MP3.com shares nearly double
By Bambi Francisco, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 6:05 PM ET Mar 2, 2000 Market Pulse
Movers & Shakers
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- MP3.com, a music Web site that lets lesser-known artists publish their music on the Net, saw its shares jump almost 100 percent Thursday after its chairman and chief executive addressed investors at a technology conference, taking on the legal matters facing his company.
Shares of MP3.com (MPPP: news, msgs) rose 15 5/8, or 95 percent, to 32.
Michael Robertson, the company's top executive, addressed investors at the Robertson Stephens Tech 2000 conference in San Francisco Thursday. "This was the first chance we had to explain the facts behind the situation in front of many institutional investors," he said.
Robertson said he outlined the upside and downside of the possible outcomes of the pending lawsuit with the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA filed a lawsuit against MP3.com over its new product, called My.MP3.com, which was made available on Jan. 12, according to Robertson. In turn, MP3.com filed suit against the RIAA on Feb. 8 for allegedly unfair business practices.
The My.MP3.com site uses MP3.com's proprietary technology Beam-it, which lets users put their CD collections online. A consumer places a music CD in a CD-ROM, and, after the user hits a button, the Beam-it technology "reads the DNA" of the disc into a consumer's PC and automatically "turns that CD on," Robertson said. The CD isn't actually uploaded because MP3.com has a database of 80,000 CDs. The company allows access to the database only if consumers can prove they own a CD, he said.
"The record companies were concerned we would hurt CD sales," Robertson said.
If MP3.com loses the lawsuit, it may have to pay damages to the record companies, he said. "They're going to have a big challenge to prove that we're hurting CD sales," he said, explaining that, through MP3.com's partnerships with several online music retailers, CD sales have actually grown.
If MP3.com wins the lawsuit, the upside is tremendous, he said.
"This sets the (stage) for a subscription-based service where MP3.com would charge consumers (a nominal fee) to access all of their music on any type of device," he said.
My.MP3.com is currently being tested by consumers on a limited basis. In two weeks of testing, consumers used My.MP3.com to store 5 million songs.
cbs.marketwatch.com
Great, Go on a business trip and this happens. Couldn't stabilize for a while. No. Has to double.
Jack |
