Michael Robertson (businessman)

Michael Robertson (born 1967) is the founder and former CEO of MP3.com, an Internet music site. In the years following his departure from MP3.com, and despite various scandals and lawsuits surrounding his moraly ambiguous business ethics, Robertson has launched several companies, including Linspire, SIPphone, MP3tunes, Mugshots.com, and Ajax 13. He is also founder of DAR.fm, a website for recording audio from the radio.

Career

MP3.com

Radio is dying because it's inconvenient and limiting. The content is not interactive, and it's available on only a limited number of devices.

Robertson was the founder of the original MP3.com. Despite the early success of MP3.com on Wall Street (the day of the stock IPO (ticker:MPPP), the stock rose from $28 to peak at $103), Robertson quickly led his company into a firestorm of lawsuits generated by the major record labels and music publishing concerns. The litigation sprang from Robertson's "Beam-it" and "Instant Listening" programs. "Beam-it" was a functionality that allowed people to quickly load their existing CD collection into online lockers at my.mp3.com and access their private music collections online. "Instant Listening" allowed instant access to CDs purchased online from participating retailers. However, to launch the service Robertson essentially had to duplicate every music CD ever created. Although MP3.com purchased the CDs for their index and users had to supply their own copy as well, MP3.com violated copyright laws by failing to acquire licenses for the music that was internally duplicated by digitally storing the material on their servers.