Sometimes magic happens… Without planning or forethought, a normal day can transform into something intense and sacred if we just open our hearts to the possibilities. Such a time was recently gifted to me and as luck would have it, a camera was rolling!MP3.com – "The Epitaph"
Found the following item in my web browsing the other day…
March 10 & 11
2Day WebCast Auction
MP3.COM, Inc.
Office, Furniture, Tech
By Order of Vivendi Universal Net USA Group, Inc.
In The Matter of MP3.COM Inc.
Complete Liquidation of 100,000 sq ft Corporate facility:
100s of Servers from Sun, Compaq, HP, & Dell, Clarion EMC Storage Arrays Networking from Cisco, Extreme, Foundry, etc. 100s of PCs, Notebooks, Printers, Monitors, Copiers, Fax Machines, etc. Digital Audio & Video Production and Editing Equipment LCD Projectors, Conference room suites 100s of Herman Miller Aeron Chairs Complete 10,000 sq ft health club Game Room including Pool Table, Foosball, Video Arcade Games, Ping Pong, Etc. Artwork, Collectable Musical instruments, Contemporary Furniture.
And if you’ve been looking for a Hummer with 7 (yes, 7) TVs they may have a perfect deal for you! Or you could bid on the custom Harley Fat Boy (insert your own joke here).
Editorial comments
There are far too many examples of corporate excess in those auction pics. And that is just the tiny tip of the MP3.com iceberg. We’ll never know how many frivolous business trips and parties went down… How many perks were bought on company expense accounts… How much money was wasted on appearances and experiments instead of being invested back into in the core business.
And then there’s their biggest wasteful excess of all… In my opinion, what Michael Robertson (the founder) did to mp3.com with his bad business decisions should have negated his receiving so much as a cent from them when he left. He should also have been held personally liable for at least a portion of the fines imposed upon the company by the courts. The litigation was a direct result of HIS decisions, made against the legal advice he had at the time, and it was ultimately the killing blow that lead to MP3.com’s spiraling downfall.
It’s amazing to me that he’s always touted in the press as being the “founder of MP3.com” with no mention of his also being its chief executioner. The man who poisoned his own well. The visionary who went blind.
When I think of what might have been, I know that Karma has placed an especially heavy weight on Mr. Robertson.
To me, the saddest pictures on that auction site were those stacks of PCs that once ruled the world of online indie music now sitting idle in saran wrap.
Ahh, well… Soon the auction buzzards will have the carcass picked clean and we can finally close the epilog and write the epitaph:
“Here lies MP3.com… As usual.” Read the rest of this entry »
From the VoGE mailbag:
I hope everyone had a happy and fulfilling holiday season. Now, let’s get on with Winter-toward-Spring!
The commercialism of Xmas turns me off more each passing year… The gawdy glitter seems less festive than vulgar… But, somewhere along the edges creeps a feeling… Hard to define… A glow inside that harkens back to a simpler time when I had a less complicated heart… This, for me, is the true Spirit of Christmas.
