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upset at the massive amount of bandwidth that Weekly's visitors were consuming, shut him down.

Musicians were divided from the beginning. Unknown acts saw the MP3 phenomenon as a way to spread their music. Brand-name acts, which had more to lose through piracy, were naturally more conservative. But even some of them wanted to release the occasional track digitally, often having to fight their labels for the right to do so. When they won, the effects could be huge, as Michael Robertson found after he opened the website MP3.com in the fall of 1997. Robertson knew almost nothing about music, he had no technology of his own, and his business background was at best undistinguished. But he knew college kids were constantly searching for MP3s on the Internet. Robertson looked up the man who owned the domain name MP3.com, which the man had picked because of his initials, and bought it for $1,000. Robertson paid another $2,500, plus $500 a month, to take over the content of a Netherlands site that offered a guide to related software available for sale.

The day that Robertson's version of the site went up with just the software guide on it, he got ten thousand Web visits and a call from someone who wanted to advertise. “We didn't know anyone. We didn't even know, like, one person in a band,” Robertson said. Instead, he displayed articles about MP3s, which in the early days he had to write himself, and posted links to where MP3s could be found. Small bands sent in clips, usually of singles, in hopes of generating sales of full CDs. Some big-name acts followed suit, including Alanis Morissette, who accepted pre-IPO shares in MP3.com and the firm's sponsorship of a tour supporting her second album.

One of the clearest displays of the power of MP3s in promoting acts would come in 1999, with Tom Petty's CD Echo. Trying to build buzz for his mature client among the younger set, Petty manager Tony Dimitriades spread the word that one song would be available as a free download at MP3.com. He had neglected to check with the singer's Warner Brothers label, which promptly chewed him out. But Warner allowed him to keep the song up for one day. And during that day, the single “Free Girl Now” was downloaded 156,992 times. There is no way of knowing how many of those downloads were later copied and spread to others; what is clear is that the gimmick helped Echo debut in the Top Ten. But even that

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