Last Great Internet Bubble Auction 432
jlouderb writes "At least that's what they are calling it. Cowan Alexander is getting ready to auction off the assets of MP3.com (now owned by CNet) on March 10th and 11th. The items up for sale include lots of those dumb Herman Miller Aeron chairs that were so popular, along with servers and notebooks that are probably hopelessly out of date. The best part, though -- a 1997 yellow hummer and a 1994 "Fat Boy" Harley. Plus, they've got pictures!"
Slashdot: home of expert furniture critics? (Score:5, Informative)
So by all means knock the fad surrounding it, but it's pretty silly to knock a perfectly good piece of furniture just because it became fashionable for a brief time.
Video games... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the MP3.COM database.. (Score:2, Informative)
MP3.com timeline (Score:5, Informative)
July 1999 - MP3.com floats, raising $344 million.
August 2000 - MP3.com pays Sony $20m in damages for copyright infringement
September 2000 - MP3.com pays Universal $250m in damages for copyright infringement
May 2001 - Vivendi Universal announces intention to purchase MP3.com
Vivendi-Universal's former chief executive Jean-Marie Messier bought MP3.com for $372m in 2001 and integrated it into Vivendi Universal Net. The rise of file-sharing, the dot.com crash and perceptions of MP3.com as a 'sell-out' resulted in the investment failing to meet its potential.
November 14, 2003
MP3.com to close
CNET has acquired MP3.com and will be shutting down the downloading service. According to an email sent to MP3.com subscribers, the site will no longer be available as of December 2nd. According to the same email, CNET is planning to launch a service in the future.
Feb 25, 2004
Complete Liquidation of 100,000 sq ft facility - 100s of Servers (Sun, Compaq, HP, & Dell) Clarion EMC Storage - 100s of PCs, Notebooks, Printers - 100s of Herman Miller Aeron Chairs - 10,000 sq ft health club - Pool Table, Foosball, Video Arcade Games, Ping Pong. Artwork, Collectable Musical instruments, Contemporary Furniture & more...
Re:Questions need to be answered! (Score:5, Informative)
Just a heads up, the giant Pez container just has many packs of normal Pez inside, not the giant Pez candies we crave.
Re:Questions need to be answered! (Score:5, Informative)
"this thing" is just an artsy piece. I always snickered, because it looks like a condom. The silver stuff is a stretchy fabric. It doesn't go up and down, even though it looks like it might.
"this stuff". Heh. I don't know whose office that was. Those desks are really cool- the two sections are adjustable. There's a crank so you can bump them up and down.
The rocket ship is from the College Tour, where Goo Goo Dolls showed their reliance on ProTools.
MP3.com died because they lacked a solid business plan.
-ted, at mppp from July 99 to Jan 03.
MP3 Independent Artists alive and well (Score:5, Informative)
The Independent Artists enrolled in the Trusonic music and messaging programs are receiving regular royalty checks.
Re:the MP3.COM database.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'd hardly call MP3.com a victim of the bubble. (Score:4, Informative)
From a pure strategic standpoint, the move was brilliant. One large cash layout, and your only major competition is crushed, divided, and made irrelevant. From every OTHER standpoint, it was abhorrant. (especially in effectively stalling out any consumer-driven progression in the music industry for years)
My personal favorite alternative (which I have no problem plugging) is Magnatune [magnatune.com]. You're free to listen to the entirety of their collection via streaming MP3, your licensed with permission to share the files, and prices are negotiable. If you want to buy an album, you can select how much you pay from $1-$20, based on what you think the album is worth.
It's a truly ambitious model, and amazingly, they seem to be doing OK so far on the small scale. But can they move out of a 'niche' market? I doubt it.
Lots of computers (Score:5, Informative)
MP3.com also served up over 5 million page views per day and had over 2 million media files and 250,000 artists.
MP3.com provided daily statistics to all of the artists and updated several hundred charts in over 300 genres of music on a daily basis.
All of this was done reliably. MP3.com was one of the faster web sites on the Internet.
Speed and scale requires a distributed computing solution which is exacltly what MP3.com pretty bright engineering team built. Everything was replicated and built in clusters. Distribution tools were automated so that everything remained in sync and operational metrics were extremely detailed.
A lot of the people at MP3.com did a terrific job, some made some important legal errors.
Re:Sad Sad Sad (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Hummer (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I fit when I was 23 (Score:4, Informative)
Why choose? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, but why choose? They could provide *both* flex time *and* loads of goodies. Plus, stock options and high salaries. The biggest thing about the dotcoms was that they really didn't have much in the way of expenses other than bandwidth and labor. It's also worth noting that by buying these things as corporate expenses, they save the programmers buying them themselves. The company can expense these; people can't. Plus, once they IPOed, how do they *keep* the people who just became millionaires: by treating them like millionaires.
Stock options are a nice perk in stable situations, but they are really volatile in start-ups. The problem is that if the company takes off, now all your employees have enough money that they don't need you anymore. The rational thing might be to hire new employees with regular salaries; the problem was that those people would rather work for another start up and get rich.
The worst part is that people who recognized that stock prices were unrealistic were pushed aside in favor of those who were willing to ride the bubble. I remember a mutual fund manager getting fired (or at least reassigned within the company) for pulling one of Fidelity's big funds (the one that used to be run by that Lynch guy who retired in his forties) out of stocks because they were overvalued. Unfortunately, he did this a year or two before the bubble burst and thus missed part of the run up. In the end he was proven correct; stocks were over-valued at the time. The problem was that they were due to get *more* over-valued and he missed it.
The larger problem is that the incentives are screwy. Whether it's accounting (Enron/Worldcom) or investing, there is no benefit to finding problems (like unsupportable predictions of the future). It's a lot easier to just take your paycheck and go home. If something goes wrong, you can always find another job (it's not your money at risk)...eventually. However, if you don't leap on the current opportunity, you miss your chance at a big bonus.
It's an unstable system. I get to choose whether you gamble or not. If you win, I get part of your losings. If you lose, then you lose and I come out even. Obviously, it makes sense for me to always gamble your money. Worst case? *I'm right where I would have been if I didn't.* What makes this worse is that the way the system worked, I would get paid each time you won but would not pay you back when you lost.
I talked to one accountant who used to work at one of those big firms (not Arthur Andersen, but similar in size). He said that they were all like that. Finding problems meant having to do more work and not meeting your estimate. Since the accounting firm guaranteed their price (i.e. if they find things wrong, they can't charge you more to actually fix them), there was a real incentive to avoid finding problems. No malevolence/collusion involved. Just the natural evolution of a flawed system.
Re:MP3.com timeline (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Those Dumb Chairs (Score:2, Informative)
But here are some commercially available options:
Seating platforms [safeshopper.com]
They're terribly expensive though, and if you're the least bit handy with a saw and electric drill you can make your own experimental models out of little more than some scrounged MDF/Plywood and 2x4. Play with different hights.
In fact, if you just want to try out a low model to see how it feels, just go to Home Depot or wherever and pick up a precut 2'x4' piece of luan and set it on some empty coffee cans, and if you don't like it you've still got a coffeetable top.
Make sure to use a cushion though, or it'll suck.
Buy two of said boards and you can experiment with different desk/chair hight combinations. Low chair with coffee table hight desk is very nice, but probably not considered suitable for the office.
KFG
Re:same old story? (Score:2, Informative)
You don't have to get lucky and find people who can't even transcribe a manufacturer's name properly (although I've bought "Rollieflex", "Rolliflex" and "Rollie Flex" cameras for good prices and sold them for profit), anyone who can't turn off caps lock, take a clear picture with a cheap digicam or even find a cheap digicam in the first place is presenting you with an opportunity to buy low and sell high. I'm reliably informed that is the secret of making money.
WARNING: THE SITE REGISTRATION IS UNENCRYPTED (Score:2, Informative)