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Shawn Fanning Is Back Into Digital Music
prostoalex writes "News.com has a lengthy 3-page article on Shawn Fanning's new venture, Snocap. After years of development the company is coming out of the stealth mode and has apparently already secured a distribution deal with Universal Music, promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight. Both News.com and Associated Press are skimpy on the details, but apparently Snocap will market the technology that will (a) sniff out the files shared illegally and (b) fill the peer-to-peer networks with licensed content and serve as a clearing house for the ventures who want to license digital music, but don't want to deal with gazillion of music labels." (We mentioned Snocap last in January.)
promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight.
Hasn't this already happened??
-Teiresias
What if they force the Internet provider to wipe any file that is not signed by them and thus prevent these p2p networks to be used for Free contents ?
As a provider of such files, I think I'd have a problem because I want my Free files to circulate freely so they'd better have a good sniffer.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Snocap will market the technology that will (a) sniff out the files shared illegally and (b) fill the peer-to-peer networks with licensed content and
.COMers to have investors escape reality.
California crack must be pretty good these days as it still allows
The reality is CDs need to be priced at $2.50, $4.00 if it is good and new.
Consumers are rebeling at paying $15 for a BTO or Abba that costs the media producers nothing to produce. Plus, many already owned the wax versions.
The media induatry is slowly screwing itself.
Now lets support fiber optics to a country that will put real content on the web, let the adverisers pay for it and open up WebTV for real so I can loose my cable company forever. This country has to have no time for the lawyers and stupid monopolistic legislation.
Therefore every time you submit your MP3 TRM's to MusicBrainz, who in turn pass them onto relatable, his company can use that data to identify the songs on the P2P networks.
Far more accurate (although slower) than looking at the title of the files. Additionally, changing the metadata within the MP3 won't make a difference.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I think people are vastly missing the point here. (Surprise.)
The idea with Napster was that Fanning *always* said that he wanted to work with the music labels. The labels (and the RIAA) unfortunately hated his idea so they sued him out of existence. In my opinion, that was a mistake. The oldskool Napster would have been a fantastic method of tracking and eventually reimbursing labels, publishers and musicians. It was the first effective music distribution network. So no: he's never been "pimping himself out to both sides of the fence." The idea was that he always wanted Napster to become the leading legitimate online distribution method.
Snocap monitors the contents of files being traded on current P2P networks (they don't say who but we could guess) and then reports that information back to a central server to monitor how often a file (of any type) has been traded and downloaded. That data can then be turned into invoices and sent to ISP's and their customers.
With that information, he could then approach organizations like ASCAP or BMI, who already get similar information from BDI and other broadcast monitoring services, and use that information for charting purposes and for reimbursement to publishers. BDI charges for this service, and so could Snocap. Since file downloads are a mixture of a broadcast and an "owned goods" model, it's not being welcomed by the likes of ASCAP either but there are likely tons of other options in terms of billing / invoicing services for this kind of monitoring. Remember: This was *always* the plan for the original Napster.
You can be "sick of" hearing Shawn Fanning's name all the time but the bottom line is he did have a legitimate plan for Napster to begin with which was summarily shut down by the record labels (who it likely would have benefited immensely had they followed it through its course.)
I think Snocap is a potentially good idea for many reasons. Mostly because I do enjoy the current methodology of the numerous P2P products out there, and also because having worked in the industry, it takes a long time to get your hands on the kind of data which something like Snocap could provide. Snocap could inevitably replace Soundscan if it was proven to be both secure and reliable enough.
If Fanning didn't do this it's questionable just how long it would take for an existing music industry company to do so.
$0.02
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The labels (and the RIAA) unfortunately hated his idea so they sued him out of existence. In my opinion, that was a mistake.
Yeah, I have to chime in here. It was a HUGE mistake. In fact, there are a few people like me who are so pissed, we'll never buy from RIAA members ever again because of what they did to Napster. That may sound stupid or an excuse to illegally copy music. The fact is, I own cases and cases of legally purchased CDs and roughly 99% of my MP3 downloads were songs I already had in my collection but downloading was faster and easier than ripping myself.
On top of which, a good number of the downloads that weren't in my collection led to purchases of CDs.
If the music industry had found a way to work with its customers, who clearly wanted this medium, I would have been happy to pay for online music. But instead, they sued their customers and they sued Napster.
So, my feeling now is FUCK THEM. They won't get another penny out of me. They want to make things right with me, they can send me a check for all the crappy quality cassette tapes that stuck to tape heads and got eaten up, or for all the CDs (you know, the media that's supposed to last forever), that got eaten by (Slashdot won't take my link to: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_328113.html)
Geotrichum fungus while I lived in Mexico.
Yeah, that'll fucking happen. Fuck 'em. I suspect the RIAA will have a much shorter lifespan than I will. I think they've outlived their usefulness and that's going to become readily apparent over the next decade. The music industry business model will change, the power and the money will go to the individual artists, where it belongs, and the RIAA will be but a bad memory.
And even if it doesn't happen, I'll keep hoping for it and I certainly won't help those assholes out.