Suno and MP3.com - Is History Repeating itself?

Ajouté : 2026-06-06

[00:00:00]Now, I came across this article regarding Sunno and it's got quite significance for me because I've been a musician for over 30 years now and I actually started on mp3.com which was the very first kind of music discovery platform that I came across back in the day. Now this was well before even Facebook, before iTunes, before Spotify, um before Napster, I think, and even before MySpace, it was the very first platform I used. Now, this article is from Zinto, and they emailed me about this today, and they they give very good feedback in terms of music news for AI and analysis. And I love this picture. I mean, look at that. sunno.com. That is how the internet used to look back in the '9s and early 2000s, which is just ironic, isn't it really?

[00:00:56]Now, back in the late '9s, as I said, 1999, MP3.com actually went public on NASDAQ and was the biggest tech IPO in history at the time. It was seen as the next big thing in music which was offering a more legitimate future after the piracy chaos of Napster. Okay, sorry. So, this is suggesting that it's after Napster, giving fans a way to stream their own collections via the internet. Now, MP3 was Oh, in fact, it might have started well before Napster but then caught up with it. Despite all its success, which it was great, like I could build my own artist profile. I could have tracks on there. People would comment on those tracks. It was really good. But it was bought down by lawsuits. And back then, I mean, this stuff wasn't readily available, so I didn't even know this was a thing. But there is correlation to Sunno, which is why I'm highlighting this on this channel. So, it had lawsuits going on from the major labels. Well, we know what that sounds like. After using copyrighted music without permission, it won the users, the culture, and the market, but it lost the war. The alternative to mp3.com was really CDs and cassettes and vinyl. In fact, vinyl wasn't really a thing back in the late '9s cuz it kind of lost its way because of CDs. But this was just a great way um of of you know marketing your music as a musician.

[00:02:22]Now um we know that um I did a video recently about the $400 million series D round that has just won as well as a $5.4 $4 billion valuation for the company which is doubling the company's worth in just seven months.

[00:02:41]And a lot of people may not appreciate that musicians are using Sunno now.

[00:02:46]There are professionals using Sunno, producers using Sunno. It's not just anybody creating music. The uh professionals are using it as a tool.

[00:02:57]And if anything's to be learned from mp3.com which went down very suddenly and I never understood why back in the day and then my space came about and I just started on there that it's investors cultural momentum and industry preeminent essence don't equal invincibility.

[00:03:15]So celebrating right now but will the company end up partying like it's 1999?

[00:03:20]There we go. That was an example of how it actually looked back then. You can see the CDs on the left. This was like a 386 or a 486 Intel PC.

[00:03:33]And you know, back then, this this picture really is nostalgic for me cuz this is just so reminiscent of that era of that time. And you could browse because there wasn't too much music back then. So, you could browse through these genres and come up with the artists and actually click on them and listen to the music. So I was synth pop music but I think back then I was known as electroop. So I think I might have been within the electronic one or the pop and rock one.

[00:04:01]Now at its peak it hit a market valuation of nearly 7 billion nearly 14 billion in 2026 which is actually more than double of Sunno's latest valuation.

[00:04:14]Now it was revolutionary in terms of the platform and it was beloved and I loved it to market my music. It was really the first platform that I came across where I was getting comments from fans saying, "We like your music." And it was an open platform for independent artists such as myself where unsigned musicians could upload original music and reach listeners directly, bypassing the label system entirely. Now, I was desperately trying to get signed in my late um late teens and early, you know, early 20s, and this was just a way for me just to go straight through potential fans.

[00:04:54]At its peak, it was delivering over 4 million audio files a day to more than 800,000 unique listeners or users. When the company launched, which was my.mpp3.com, mp3.com which was a feature that let users access their personal CD libraries from any internet connected computer by inserting the disc to prove verifiable ownership. UMG weren't happy about it as well as some of the most powerful record labels back then. So the reason why they weren't happy was because MP3 had ripped around 80,000 commercial CDs onto its own servers without licensing.

[00:05:32]Now the difference between MP3 and Sununo in relation to that is that the model that was trained was used on copyrightable music.

[00:05:42]Sunno is obviously going with the um kind of freestyle approach kind of you know that that thing but um but it'll be interesting to see but there is a difference with that they are not putting music on their own service. So you know don't do that. instead they use the music to train the model and that model is on the servers. So that's the difference here. So there is a more legal argument to Sununo whereas MP3.com they didn't have the luxury of having their own model. It just was ripping music and playing it on their servers which is not allowed.

[00:06:16]So and even though the verification layer was great, it wasn't changing the fact that the music was on their servers.

[00:06:26]Now, mp3.com argued that ripping CDs to its servers was spaceshifting use that the users already own the discs and the company was just enabling access from a new location, not actually creating like a distribution channel or anything. But that was rejected by the judge in the US because the copying back then was known as commercial reproduction regardless of what users did with it. So when the suit ended, the settlement was with only UMG $53.4 $4 million, which is $25,000 per infringed work. And total settlements with all plaintiffs cost more than $200 million, more than half what it raised in IPO. What remained of mp3.com was sold to a company for $350 million, the parent company of the label that had actually destroyed it, the vendor Universal.

[00:07:17]Now, that is really unfortunate for mp3.com, but I see why they were sued and and they lost in terms of that. Um, but yeah, so 1999 all over again. Let me just quickly play this. Let's just have a quick look at this video.

[00:07:35]Oh, great. Love adverts, don't you?

[00:07:37]That's just what we need in terms of this.

[00:07:41]Let me skip back that. I'll see if I can feature that later on cuz that might be an opportunity for me in terms of doing that later. But I think this video is just showing what it was like in terms of mp3.com back then. I'll leave a link of that video in in fact I'll leave a link of the article in the description so you can check it out. Now there are similarities between mp3.com and sunno.

[00:08:04]Both companies have built these amazing platforms that are disruptors but in different ways. So, mpc.com democratized democratized distribution, making it possible for unsigned musicians to bypass labels and put completed songs directly in front of potential fans.

[00:08:21]So, democratized production, letting people who may not play, sing, produce, or record create the song itself.

[00:08:28]So, investors supported both platforms.

[00:08:33]MP3.com had Alanis Moriceet. So claims to have top artists, producers, and songwriters using the platforms. And they've had backers like um Blau in in the past, but the back in the 2000s, Wired, which was a um a blog company back then, the lawsuit era offered a debate, which was basically the conversation wasn't really about whether people wanted digital music. It was about who would actually control it. And don't forget this was long before streaming services came on board.

[00:09:07]So Schulman in terms of the CEO back in June the 3rd said, "We believe there's a huge opportunity to create new experiences for fans while helping artists reach audiences, build a community, and unlock new creative and economic possibilities.

[00:09:27]But the core tension seems quite similar to mp3.com which is why I think sunna needs to learn from this really.

[00:09:37]Both companies are using and ingesting copyrighted material without permission.

[00:09:43]Both are defending that that practice.

[00:09:46]Both are being sued by the major labels.

[00:09:49]So time will tell in terms of what's going to happen to all of these lawsuits.

[00:09:54]they were able to both raise capital regardless of these lawsuits by their similar investors. And this kind of sums it up. So you've got mp3.com on the left and so you can see the mission there. You can see mp3.com is about distribution and sunno is about production.

[00:10:18]You've got training data. Now, we don't know how many tracks were actually ripped in terms of Sunno, but time will tell in terms of that. And Sununo is going with the defense of fair use. So, it'll be interesting to see if that's one in court.

[00:10:32]You can see the plaintiffs here. They are very similar. We had UMG, both companies, Sony, both companies, uh Warner Music Group, which is Warner back then. uh seven other labels for MP3.com and also uh RIAA.

[00:10:49]But WMG actually settled with Sunno back in November 2025 and became a partner with them. But MB3 didn't ever have that luxury. They never did a deal with these labels and ultimately it was then sold for $350 million.

[00:11:06]So it is going to be interesting to see how Sunno plays out.

[00:11:12]Now, in terms of the investment, it talks about that a little bit and the bond capital of of what these companies actually have investments in. So, if you're interested in that, definitely check out the article. It's really good from Sunno's point of view that they've won the series defunding cuz that's going to help them.

[00:11:31]But whether it's going to be enough, time will tell.

[00:11:36]And you know this gives an idea of how much Sunna has actually grown. You know just over a year ago they had series B funding of $125 million with a valuation of 500.

[00:11:50]Series C was November $250 million with valuation of $2.45 billion.

[00:11:58]So the growth of this company is just huge. So it's now $5.4 $4 billion and they've just won a seeding round of 400 million. It's just incredible amount of money of a company that is just over two years old in terms of the time frame for for all of that money. So they've raised um just over three quarters of a million dollars in that time.

[00:12:23]Now there are different variables as I've said. Um, the thing is is that that those songs were actually on the servers of mp3.com and Sunna doesn't have that, but they did use those songs to train their own model without permission. So, we'll just have to wait and see in terms of that. So, UMG sued mp3.com back in 2000 and there there wasn't a digital music marketplace to point to. So, iTunes didn't exist back then. Streaming didn't exist, as I've said.

[00:12:57]Now, obviously, we've got all sorts of things going on. We've got 11 music, we've got, we've got Google Flow Music, Spotify.

[00:13:06]So, we're in a different music industry now than what we had back then. It was a lot more simplistic. I mean, I really do miss MP3.com if I'm honest, cuz life was simple back then. There was a lot less noise in terms of getting attention. I mean, look how difficult social media is now to accommodate all of this stuff. An artist has to do everything now. Not just put a track up and hope that people listen to it. Back then, that's what you could do.

[00:13:37]Now, Sunno have got 2 million paid subscribers. They're generating 7 million songs every day. Um, now obviously those are not distributed all of those. And don't forget, it does generate two generations every single time. So that's really 3.5 generation points that that's been done. That's still a hell of a lot considering that's every day. I love this picture. Look at this. MPC.com and Sunno with a judge in the back.

[00:14:10]I love that picture.

[00:14:14]and Sunno, UMG, and Sony are still in federal court in Massachusetts. The fair use defense relied on is the same defense that was rejected in the year 2000. Whether training a commercial AI model on copyrighted m recordings without a license constitutes infringement has not yet been settled, but by the end of this case, it will be.

[00:14:35]So, we'll find out.

[00:14:38]Now, back in May, uh, UMG and Sony deployed audio fingerprinting technology to actually scan Sunno's data sets, and then were able to file a motion to add 61,000 specific recordings to that complaint. Because don't forget, it's per track that they will be sued on for willful infringement, which if that does happen, and that's a maximum penalty of $150,000 per track, then that's going to be a huge issue. if they are sued for the maximum statutory penalty, which would equate to $9.15 billion.

[00:15:16]So, we're in very interesting times right now. And the $400 million round will not stop that legal lawsuit. It just delays it a little more.

[00:15:27]So, I find that really interesting. I love keeping in touch with Sunno.

[00:15:33]mp3.com had the users and had the institutional confidence and the growth curve that looked from inside a venture fund in 1999 that it could only go one direction and that was up and when it was finished it sold for $350 million which was a 95% collapse in value is replaying that tape at 10 times the scale and there are similarities and parallels to this which is why I have reported on it even though they are obviously different companies.

[00:16:05]So, we'll just have to wait and see if I click on that hyperlink cuz I am absolutely desperate to see what comes up when you go on to mp3.com.

[00:16:14]And unfortunately, we don't have much other than the domain is for sale and it's for sale for half a million dollars.

[00:16:22]What a shame.

[00:16:25]What a shame.

[00:16:27]So, there you have it. I hope you like this video. Catch you on the next one.

[00:16:30]and subscribe if you're interested in all things sunno and AI music distribution platforms, AI music generators, and the like. Take care.