in my experienceA few days ago VU sent out the announcement that the url MP3.com had been sold and the new owner was not taking possession of the music and band pages. This means the music will die, disappear, and vanish forever. MP3.com is a global treasure. First off, it is the largest music site in the world, nothing else is even close. And as I mentioned, it contains a diversity of music found nowhere else. If you want Britney Spears, there are lots of places to go. If you want Brittany Bauhaus, Brittany Lacy, Brittany Frompovich, or even Lymp Brittany, MP3.com is the one place in the world you'll find them. On December 2nd, their sites there will no longer exist.Delete? Doesn't that seem irresponsible?
I can only imagine that a million MP3's takes up some massive amount of space (ie, SAN fabrics), and likely requires some big iron to dish it all out. It's likely that the cost of that hardware is just that, a cost (as opposed to a profit center). But why not just let Archive.org do its thing and archive it all? I can only assume copyright/intellectual-property issues are there, or just laziness and ignorance. Who knows? I don't.