Music search engine site SeeqPod has officially filed for bankruptcy protection in the Northern District of California, filing for Chapter 11 protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy court.
The company, according to documents, has $2 million in assets, but $1.6 million -- and growing -- in total debts. Since its public launch, SeeqPod had raised $7 million in venture funding, but has faced several multibillion dollar lawsuits from major record labels.
Much to the dismay of the company, SeeqPod probably is best known for being sued by the Warner Music Group in early 2008, with the record label accusing the search engine of attempting to make money from advertising used in the site's Web player.
Now that the company faces both legal and monetary problems, SeeqPod looks to spawn clone services by selling its source code to third-party developers. Interested developers can pay $5,000 to have access to the source code. If successful, it might be similar to when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) shut down Napster and Kazaa only to open the flood gates to organized peer-to-peer file sharing in the United States.
It's unknown how popular the offer has been so far, and the filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy may limit the overall interest from developers.
SeeQpod has 12 full-time employees and a number of contractors, while indexing more than 13 million music files.
