The company hopes to grow sales at its marketing partners' sites, which in turn could drum up MP3's advertising and electronic commerce revenues. The company hasn't set pricing. Another feature on the upgraded site, at My. MP3.Com, is Beam-it, software that allows consumers to store and listen to their CDs from other computers. Users put a CD in their computer, and Beam-it extracts the track information.
Users can then reorder the songs into streaming play lists.
MP3 is the most popular format for sending songs over the Web, but it has been spurned by major record labels that fear its lack of copyright protection. Anticipating the reaction of the RIAA , Robertson said that security measures are in place to prevent copyrighted music from being illegally distributed. Since users will only be able to stream the music, and not download it to hard drives, illegal MP3 files cannot be created, he said. During a webcast Wednesday, Robertson demonstrated the new service and said it would stimulate sales in the music industry in the same way that VCRs juiced up the movie business. Robertson also said that eventually consumers may not even want to bother buying the physical CD, preferring to have the music stored in an online storage space instead.