Swapping Clock Cycles for Free Music?

droopus writes "USA Today is reporting on an innovative business model for the music business. Free music for your spare CPU cycles. Honest Thief says the firm has developed software, to be available in the second quarter of this year, that will enable file-sharing providers to capitalize on the unused CPU cycles of their members. That in turn would allow them to raise money to compensate artists for the use of their material. Honest Thief said the software, known as ThankYou 2.0, enables a peer-to-peer file-sharing client to turn the computers of digital music fans into nodes in a distributed net. By leasing out the processor power on distributed nets to research facilities the firm could generate revenues that would be distributed back to the musicians. Some very smart people have suggested this before, but this seems like the first real implementation. "

Comments

But .....?

[rudy_wayne]

Aren't the vast majority of people still on 56k dial-up connections? Is it really possible to do "distributed computing" using computers that are constantly being turned on and off at irregular and unpredictable intervals?

Like paying airline mechanics with free car washes

[writertype]

I confess I don't understand the business model here. It seems like Honest Thief is offering to pay record companies from the proceeds from an arguably untested business model, which would generate an unknown amount of money that would be divided among an unknown number of people in an unknown number of ways.

It seems to make more sense to offer the CPU cycles directly to sound production studios for post-production audio, to transform tomorrow's raspy-voiced bimbo into the sultry songbird that studios want and crave.

Just the 2003 version of an ad-driven "free" ISP service, I'm afraid.

Concerns...

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

As a business model, I could come to respect this as a method, but I do have some concerns:

• Nature of data processing - I'd for one like to know what they'd want to use my computer for. It's pretty clear what Distributed.net and Seti@home do, but businesses often don't have the best interests of consumers in mind, so this would be important.
  
  
• Compensation - I'd like to know how they'd compensate me for the CPU time. Operating computers isn't free, and the electricity costs of running the machine (especially in a desert like Phoenix) could outweigh the benefit, to where it would be cheaper for us to go get CDs. Also, are they compensating us by the packet, giving us a certain download limit, or is simply being connected enough?
  
  
• Malicious Users - If they are compensating by giving access based on how much data return or CPU time spent, I'd next be worried that they wouldn't do an adequate job enforcing proper use. Remember, Seti@home is plagued by individuals faking packet processing, simply to increase their stats artificially, and they're not even being compensated for their troubles. Additionally, the possibility of abuse, like some high school student running the process on the 30 computers in his or her lab exists, and that would cause all kinds of abuse of equipment problems, that could leave the school district with the feeling that the abuse was committed by the company who made the software, rather than simply by the student.
  

Barring these concerns, I would see this as possibly viable...

Good Idea: This is how the RIAA Will See it:

[Gefiltefish11]

Geek perspective: If you let me dl your music (something I want), I'll let you have my unused cycles (something that is surely valuable).

Evaluation: Fair trade

RIAA perspective: You want to drive to my house, take my stuff, and drive away. In exchange for me allowing you to rob me blind (yes, this is the way the RIAA thinks, despite absence of evidence), you're offering to let me borrow your shitty old car while you're not using it??

Evaluation: You're still a god damned thief, geek boy. Go to hell!

Not viable

[acidrain69]

I highly doubt this will be a viable revenue stream for the music industries. Think about how much they get for an average CD as far as profit goes. Now compare that to your average MP3 downloader. Computer processing power is cheap. If your average person downloads an album a month (a SEVERELY conservative estimate) that is a $15-20 album that isn't sold. Over the course of a year, you are seeing $180-$240 given out in free downloads (that is the album cost @ 1 album/month). You may as well just BUY a board and chip and case for that price and network it locally. You can get a middle of the road AMD or Intel processor and board for that cost, and possibly fit in the case cost. If it has onboard lan, just pop some memory in and you're good to go. Use network booting, maybe a MOSIX cluster or something.

Don't forget to add in the salaries of all the people who have to run this "P2P for cycles" system. Development costs. Administration. Those are people that could just be running the purchased cluster, instead of trying to milk P2P somehow. I think this is just a shot in the dark. Or a conspiracy to fingerprint downloads, as someone else mentioned.