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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
"promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight"
Other side-projects include:
Turning lead into gold. (codenamed "sorceror's" stone, for american market)
Project "elixir"; granting licensees eternal life.
Research into rocket powering pigs, and hell-proof cats.
"iPods sell like hotcakes despite being not free."
iPods sell like hot-cakes because they work with free. If they didn't, they wouldn't.
FTA:Record executives say they are also interested in a feature that will track peer-to-peer requests for songs that aren't yet licensed for digital distribution.
Just release a single titled "Teen sex anime barnyard hack crack lolita".
Why would I bother with this when I already have an alternative that is free of charge, more secure, and has more content?
These people forget that the DRM'ed content is incompatible with my living room DVD player, my car CD player and my portable MP3 player.
I gathered from the article that a dealer could forward a copy and the reciepient could then buy it. It sounds like buying the DRM key to unlock it to me. My hardware can't use that content. Get a clue guys.. Use a universaly accepted standard.
This is as useful to me as if you came in to my store and only had Lyra and not dollars. I'd send you away to get it exchanged into something accepted here. DRM music has the same problem. I won't take it. I can't use it. Calling it music doesn't make it playable any more than calling Lyra in the US money makes it good for buying things here.
Just because I can use it somewhere doesn't make it universal in my location.
The truth shall set you free!
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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Music is like porn. There is tons of free porn out there, but the porn business is still booming. When a person "consumes" pornographic media, their desire for more generally increases. I believe the same goes for music. My exposure to easy music downloads has only served to increase my general interest in music. I listen to more genres and artists now than I ever thought imaginable a few years ago. And I have paid a decent amount for new music as a result, via the current channels.