mp3.com

One of the chief concerns that some in the music industry have about digital-locker services is that at least a couple of them allow all songs, even pirated tunes, to be stored in the cloud.

Thomas Hesse, digital chief for Sony Music Entertainment, said as much at the Midem conference in France on Saturday, according to Billboard.

"We are very uncomfortable with a model where you can just throw anything into the cloud and stream it, if what you threw into the cloud was not legitimately purchased," Hesse said during a panel session. "It's not the … Read more

Web radio and cloud music are hot--largely thanks to the recent success of Pandora, but that doesn't stop Michael Robertson from declaring that what online radio currently offers is "lame."

Robertson, the controversy-courting founder of MP3.com and Linspire, is preparing to roll out a new online music service called BYO.fm. He said that BYO taps into Web radio's potential to enable users to act as their own program directors.

"All online radio does now is transfer audio over the Web," Robertson said. "Web radio should be personalized."

BYO, which stands … Read more

Update: 5:42 p.m. PT: To include information about a witness being compensated by EMI.

The copyright lawsuit filed by major recording company EMI against Michael Robertson, founder of MP3tunes.com, took an unexpected turn on Friday.

A U.S. District judge will allow EMI to file suit against Robertson personally--not just his company, MP3tunes, according to a copy of the judge's decision. Besides accusing MP3tunes of violating its copyright in a suit filed in November 2007, EMI also named Robertson as a defendant.

A year ago, a judge in the case threw out the copyright-infringing charges against … Read more

Over the years, Michael Robertson, the man who founded pioneering digital music service MP3.com, has never hesitated to make a prediction about the sector's future.

"It's not a business," Robertson has told me often in the past about ad-supported music sites. Frankly, in the past, I didn't pay much attention. I do now.

The man who has fought more high-profile battles with the record industry than anybody in technology, and whose experience in digital music is nearly unmatched, has never appeared more prescient. He told me two years ago that ad-supported music sites would … Read more

Correction at 11:10 a.m. PDT: Lala's patent filing is an application. And Lala says it has made no promises to music labels regarding piracy in order to offer 10-cent "Web Songs."

Michael Robertson, the gadfly of digital music, is once again pestering rivals about their business practices.

Robertson--the controversial founder of MP3.com, Linspire, and MP3tunes.com--has accused Lala of attempting to transfer control of its users' music to the recording labels.

Robertson claimed last month on his personal blog that Lala had developed an "insidious new plot" to entice its users … Read more

A fitting anthem for Michael Robertson these days would be The Rolling Stones' hit, Get Off of My Cloud.

For nearly a decade, Robertson, the often controversial cofounder of MP3.com and Linspire, has toiled to store music in the cloud, the term used to describe the seemingly limitless amount of data and services accessible with a Web browser. But in the past, Robertson's efforts have led him into epic legal battles with the music industry. That's where he finds himself once again. In November, EMI filed a copyright suit against him and his music service, MP3tunes.com. … Read more

A federal judge has dismissed a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by EMI Group against Michael Robertson, founder of MP3tunes.

The bad news for Robertson, who also founded MP3.com and Linspire is that the judge allowed EMI, one of the four largest recording companies, to continue to pursue the copyright claims against MP3tunes, court documents show.

The case, filed last November in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was brought by 14 record companies and music publishers affiliated with EMI.

MP3tunes enables users to store music in the so-called cloud. The company's 150,000 customers … Read more

Serial entrepreneur Michael Robertson has started a new business-information site called Dealipedia.

Robertson, founder of such companies as MP3.com and Linspire, is relying on the wisdom of crowds to supply information on IPOs, mergers, acquisitions, closings, bankruptcies, and investments. He said that Wikipedia has proven that allowing the masses to provide and edit information works.

Dealipedia is a "combination (of) news, reference and perhaps a bit of gossip for business deals," Robertson said in an e-mail to CNET News.com.

At Dealipedia.com, I clicked on the site's "Who Made the Money" section to … Read more

Today is the official U.S. launch of Ezmo, a Norwegian Web service that allows users to post and share their entire digital music collections through a simple Flash application.… Read more