What happened to MP3Manila.com?

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 :)

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

at any rate, still quite informative.

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

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)

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