Michael Robertson @ MP3.com: The Entrepreneur Who Got Sued for Making Music Streamable

Hard as it may be to remember now, there was a time when every song we wanted to listen to wasn’t available to stream instantly. Instead, we had to own physical copies. First came the record, then the tape, then the CD.

However, in the late 90s, a new encoding technology was developed that allowed near-CD-quality music to exist in a relatively small file format. The format was called MP3. You’ve surely heard of it.

As MP3s grew in popularity, Michael Robertson decided to buy the domain name “MP3.com.” He wasn’t buying the domain because he was interested in the music industry. He was buying it because he owned a file search engine called Filez.com, and he thought he could use the surging popularity of MP3s to direct traffic to his startup. However, when he launched a website on MP3.com, thousands of people started showing up, and he knew he needed to capitalize on the opportunity.

Ultimately, Michael built a service people could use to stream their music collections online. That doesn’t sound unique today, but Michael launched MP3.com in the late 1990s, and, at the time, no other streaming service existed. The uniqueness of MP3.com made it wildly popular with consumers. It also made MP3.com the target of a lot of animosity from the powerful recording industry.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.