The Z Company, operator of audio internet site MP3.com, has reportedly received $11m in venture funding from Sequoia Capital, backer of such high-profile companies as Yahoo and 3Com. The Z Company has announced a change of name to MP3.com Inc to reflect its focus on the site. The investment comes as MP3, the people’s standard audio format, faces increasing competition, not only from proprietary compression technologies like a2b Music and Liquid Audio, but also from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)’s Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). To muddy the waters still further, an a2b licensee, Global Music Online, has named its own proprietary format MP4 – the name informally adopted for MP3’s legitimate successor as an open standard, MPEG-4.
