Popular mp3 blog Robin Hood of Indie Music was shut down yesterday afternoon. For most of the day visitors were greeted with a 404 error from Blogger.com, where the site was published.

This morning the blog was back up with a single message in Spanish (?). When reading through the comments, it appears as though the author has already put up a new site. The new one, Robin Hood of Indie Music 2, has been up since last year.

The author left a post saying this about the shut down”

“robinhoodofindiemusic.blogspot.com has been deleted. I knew this day would come which is why I made this backup site. anyway, i probably lost about 1000 posts but shit happens.”

There has still been no mention as to what specifically caused the shut down.

EMI’s new bigwig, Guy Hands (no really, that’s his name), announced today in London that nearly a third of EMI employees will be dropped from the label as part of the British company’s ‘reshaping’ after a dismal 2007.

Hands said that over the next three months between 1,500 to 2000 employees will be fired in an attempt to save around $400 million US.

“We have spent a long time looking intensely at EMI and the problems faced by its Recorded Music division which, like the rest of the music industry, has been struggling to respond to the challenges posed by a digital environment,” Hands said today in a press release on the company’s website. “We believe we have devised a new revolutionary structure for the group that will improve every area of the business.”

Some of EMI’s artists, like Coldplay, have said they are unhappy with the label. Last year, two of the company’s biggest artists, Paul McCartney and Radiohead left the label.

“The new owners were already facing an artists’ revolt even before today’s announcement,” said Billboard writer Andre Pain in an article today. “With Robbie Williams’ manager expressing concern about the direction of the company, and Coldplay’s manager voicing his “confusion” at last week’s departure of EMI U.K. Chairman and CEO Tony Wadsworth.”

Wadsworth, EMI’s former UK Chief Executive left the company earlier this month after 25 years.

Part of the restructuring includes allowing the company to start a “new partnership with artists based on transparency and trust” and to help artists expliot new forms of income “such as enhanced digital services and corporate sponsorship arrangements.”

On the 7^th of November 2007, potential P2P pirate ship Albumbase went offline. Only days before Albumbase’s fall, the privately owned BitTorrent site OiNK was taken down by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Wired writer Eliot Van Buskirk reported that he had received an email, by a source who remains unnamed, that claimed the IFPI had tracked down the former owner of Albumbase who resided in the UK. The IFPI then allegedly found information on the new owner, Seattle based Tatto media. The letter then says that the FBI, through the Recording Industry Association of America, is looking in to the site.

While the full story on Albumbase’s fall is still unrevealed, message boards have already been filled with replacements for the site. One such site, Albumhunt, has an interface that is surprisingly close to Albumbase.

Albumbase, and many of its ‘replacements’, merely serve as ‘match makers’, linking users with music files hosted on ‘One-click Hosters’ such as Rapidshare or MegaUpload. There, files are temporarily (times vary per site) uploaded by users and the links to these files is what Albumbase provides. Unlike other P2P services, users of One-click Hosting sites are downloading off of the website itself (some of the larger sites claim to transfer a hundred terabytes a day) rather than from each others computers.

In an article on NewTeeVee, writer Janko Roettgers explains that these One-click services may not come under fire by the IFPI anytime soon for good reason:

“One-click hosters are in fact protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act under U.S. law. Touching this protection would spell trouble for Photobucket, AOL’s XDrive, Box.net and tons of other free hosting services, but it might not affect most one-click services. RapidShare is incorporated in Switzerland and hosts its servers in Germany. Megaupload is based in Hong Kong.”

Although the One-click services seem relatively stable. They do not feature any sort of ‘search’ function, so uploaders need to share the links for their files in order for others to download. Sites like Albumbase are providing a forum for these links to bigger groups and, more importantly, allowing users to search for specific files.

UPDATE: 01/15/08

Wired writer Eliot Van Buskirk reported today that he is still recieving text message updates from the Albumbase site. It seems as though there is still some action on the site.

I have found that the site is still accessible through this address without running into the 404 error by going to www.albumbase.com. It seems as though the site has still not been updated since early November, and many of the links that are still up are not dead.