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Rod Underhill (b. 1953) was one of the original cofounders of MP3.com, serving under CEO Michael Robertson. While at MP3.com, Underhill's official title was "Founding Music Director," but behind the scenes he designed a complicated system of screening millions of songs for potential copyright violations. As one of the primary public faces of MP3.com, Underhill was sometimes involved in controversies, such as his work as the enforcer of honesty regarding MP3.com's artist royalty system.

During his stay at MP3.com, Underhill coauthored two titles about the Internet for the Complete Idiot's Guide series, which were published internationally in English, French, Spanish and Polish. While serving as the founding music director of MP3.com, Underhill from time to time would issue written reviews of various MP3.com artists, which were highly coveted by those who recieved one.

MP3.com launched, with Underhill's support, a record breaking Initial Public Offering which brought the company an immediate valuation of nearly 7 billion dollars, before the valuation leveled out to more than 2 billion dollars. Underhill and his fellow founders eventually sold MP3.com via merger to Vivendi-Universal, a huge entertainment conglomerate.

Since leaving MP3.com, Underhill has served as a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and in 2008 was awarded a Webby Award (People's Choice Award) for his work as cofounder of Podlinez.com.

In May of 2005, Underhill appeared as the keynote speaker at the Rockies Venture Club's annual venture capital conference in Denver, Colorado. Underhill enjoys working with new technology companies, helping them secure venture capital.

Currently, Rod Underhill serves as a senior advisor to nimbit as well as a cofounder of X7 Media Group, Inc., a marketing technology company, in partnership with Vincent Sorge and Curt Cuomo , the latter being a platinum award winning producer and Grammy nominated songwriter for the rock group Kiss and other famed rock bands. Represented by famed Silicon Valley lawfirm Heller Ehrman, very little about this project has been publicly released, save for hints at the technologies being worked on, such as a reference published on the X7 website that "TokenID is a revolutionary and secure way to pay for things without using credit cards, or revealing any personal information at all."

Underhill is also known for his list of "The One Hundred Greatest Albums."

Underhill has been featured in a series of advertisements published by Legalzoom (national radio advertising) and by Elance, the latter featuring animation done by Underhill himself.

A musician and song writer, Canned Heat's famed lead guitarist Harvey Mandel covered Underhill's song, Baby Come Back.

His solo album, Science Friction, was released internationally on CD in MP3 file format, as a part of his book The Complete Idiot's Guide to MP3, which was the first MP3 only album release in the world and resulted in his induction into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences .

External links

"Rod Underhill and Michael Robertson are two men who went through enormous effort several years ago to hide and censor the truth concerning the earnings of numerous MP3.com artists when it was in its Golden age..."

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 *[http://www.nimbit.com/about/team.php  Nimbit's Advisory Team]
 *[http://books.dreambook.com/artistpr/sarahfan11.html Underhill and Michael Robertson condemned for their treatment of artists on MP3.com ]
+"Rod Underhill and Michael Robertson are two men who went through enormous effort several years ago to hide and censor the truth concerning the earnings of numerous MP3.com artists when it was in its Golden age..."
 *[http://www.elance.com/p/corporate/community/resource-center/elancer-jun-07.html?rid=15PAK  Elance Interviews Rod Underhill]
 *[http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2004/10/28/Pulse/Bloody.Lovelies.More.Than.A.PopRock.Exterior-1969008.shtml  Underhill Review Quoted by Press]