MP3.com was a website operated by Paramount Global publishing tabloid-style news items about digital music and artists, songs, services, and technologies.

That service was shut down on December 2, 2003, by CNET, which, after purchasing the domain name (but not MP3.com's technology or music assets), established the current MP3.com site.

NARAS's reason for pulling the ad was "the limited number of advertising positions available in the magazine in conjunction with the somewhat controversial nature of your product.

A few months later, the two companies launched mp3radio.com, a joint project intended to create mini-websites to offer MP3 downloads, concert tickets, and, eventually, CD sales to listeners of Cox's terrestrial radio stations.

MP3.com engineering developed their own content delivery network and data warehousing technologies handling seven terabytes of customer profile information.

Before damage was awarded, MP3.com settled with the plaintiff, UMG Recordings, for $53.4 million, in exchange for the latter's permission to use its entire music collection.

Jean-Marie Messier, then-CEO of Vivendi Universal, stated "The acquisition of MP3.com was an extremely important step in our strategy to create both a distribution platform and acquire state-of-the-art technology.

MP3.com will be a great asset to Vivendi Universal in meeting our goal of becoming the leading online provider of music and related services.

"[8] Vivendi Universal had difficulties growing the service and eventually dismantled the original site, selling off all of its assets including the URL and logo to CNET in 2003.

E-mails to MP3.com artists and a placeholder message at MP3.com announced that CNET would be coming up with replacement services in the future, based on its current download.com facilities.

A business unit of MP3.com, Trusonic, which provides background music and messaging services to retailers, acquired licenses with 250,000 artists representing 1.7 million songs.