What happened to MP3Manila.com?

Abe Olandres October 17, 2005 · 1 min read

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MP3Manila was one of the few internet ventures back in 2000 that got some considerable funding from VCs. It’s business model was patterned from US-based MP3.com where they feature songs and mp3 downloads of unsigned Pinoy artists.

… to make Filipino music readily available to its Filipino audience and to promote the rise of Filipino artists in the international music scene. MP3Manila.com offers free, downloadable Filipino music online. And with a high degree of representation among musical genres, the website has indeed delivered the Filipino artist to the international music scene.

MP3Manila.com began as a school project designed by Nono Felipe along with 4 other graduating Ateneneans back in 2000 (Armand Abaya, Jojo Coronel, Mark Escueta, JR Ignacio). They got about USD$96,000 in fresh funding from AJOnet Holdings.

We all know they didn’t survive the tech crunch and just like almost all other internet ventures in those days, the advertising model did not catapult them to success. In the first place, the idea wasn’t original and was merely copied from MP3.com.

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

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20 Comments

Greenmart · 10 years ago

I think Mp3manila.com was a success. It gave a chance for Technoblastca. Long live Technoblastca!

NOEMER DOMINIC · 14 years ago

mga hungkag… tang ina ambobobo nyo. inofferan kayo ng 10M pesos noon tapos di nyo kinagat. mga tanga

soudnonymous · 19 years ago

i heard this new Digital prepaid card (www.digijooze.com) will be up soon…adressing the concern of artist..it’s like that of itunes mp3 card. but this one is prepaid and a music will only cost you 10pesos to download. althougt i think they are still in beta but sources said that it will also be available around the world…hmmm…

Andrew · 20 years ago

Mp3manila.com was a success in the sense that thousands of Filipino musicians were exposed to the world through the internet. Our website was a venue where Pinoy musicians(not just in the Philippines, but worldwide) could strut their stuff and show off their talents for the whole world to hear.

As Mark said, the idea was too early for it’s time. During the ancient times of 2001, it was every geeks dream to have a 256kbps connection when 56kbps was the norm and others were still on 28kbps. It was very time consuming to download a quality 5MB song then. Illegal downloads were still readily available, and it wasn’t rare that people would leave their pc’s on overnight to download a few songs.

Another thing, it was our graduation year from university in 2001. As selfish as it may sound, we had the whole world in front of us. And i think we all agreed to move on to other things soon after that. It was a very sad decision since we were very passionate about the website, but life goes on as they say… and you’ll be surprised as to where we all are now… ;)

Andrew Apuada (web development manager / marketing head 2000-2001)

Carlos Caliwara · 20 years ago

Greetings! We wish to invite everyone to visit our site, http://www.mp3pilipinas.com. We have establish the site to promote OPM and pursue an anti-piracy advocacy. We are happy with the way we have been received by people in the music industry and the general web population, here in the Philippines and abroad. We welcome suggestions, comments and criticisms. Through this manner we will be able to improve the site and its contents. The site was launched and became live last September 8, 2006. God Bless!

mark · 20 years ago

Mp3manila idea was borne out of the need of 2 things the lack of filipino mp3 in the web and a new way of promoting up and comming artists.

yes mp3.com was the model, but it was original in its own right. mp3manila.com still lives on at http://www.fiestamundo.com check it out.

m3manila.com was an idea too early for its time, back then there were no ipods and dsl was 4000 pesos.

over all mp3manila helped a few unknown artists that are successfull in thier own right today, two of them is slapschock and paulo santos.

we have enjoyed serving the filipino artists in those years.

Mark Escueta – mp3manila.com co-founder

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief · 21 years ago

Itâ€™s one of those â€œWhy didnâ€™t I thought of that?â€ projects that got good word and â€œfundingâ€.

Itâ€™s all about timing I guess.

gabriel · 21 years ago

for some odd reason, nade-depress ako sa ‘what happened to’ series mo, mr. abe :)

at any rate, still quite informative.

Migs · 21 years ago

Nono Felipe‘s blog.

AJOnet was one of those me-too “VC’s.”

Marc · 21 years ago

Nothing wrong with copying/adapting an idea online :) but back in 2000, downloading MP3 via a website wasn’t really the hottest thing to do. With most people on dialup, it was more productive (no timeouts, no proxy limitations, etc.) to get your files via the numerous Napster clones out there.

Maybe it was the product itself…the people online back then didn’t exactly like Pinoy music with a passion. I think most of the wired people during those days had no affinity with the local music scene, they liked MTV/Billboard music.

My 25 centavos :)