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Peer Impact Signs 3 Major Record Labels

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the late-than-never dept.

An anonymous reader submits "Three of the Big Four music labels have reached licensing agreements to provide their music to the soon-to-launch Peer Impact network, a peer-to-peer service that enables legal music file-sharing."

13 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. DRM? by grub · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Are the files distributed on that network DRM'd somehow? If so that will doom it and give the RIAA more ammo for the "illegal P2P is killing us!" rant.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  2. Uhmm.... by thebra · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now There's Another Place To Get Your Jessica Simpson Fix, Legally

    I sure hope they have better artist than this or you can count me out.

    1. Re:Uhmm.... by badasscat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Now There's Another Place To Get Your Jessica Simpson Fix, Legally

      I sure hope they have better artist than this or you can count me out.

      They list some other artists there and none of them are any better. Yet they later say they want PI to be have the most "diverse" content. Yeah, right - everything from Britney Spears to Jessica Simpson!

      Yet another indication of how clueless the music industry is these days.

      I also checked out the PI web site and there's almost no information there about the service. How does it work? Is this that stupid thing I read about a while ago where you're actually just sharing links to music rather than the music itself? In other words, it's just like publishing your playlist somewhere and then linking to some music publisher's store? If so, I don't even really consider it P2P. And I'm sure the quality's going to suck (128k files, no doubt) and there's got to be some pretty onerous DRM tacked on too.

      No thanks. I'll stick to buying and ripping my own CD's. You'd think the industry would love guys like me who actually go out and pay for their music (when I actually find a new artist I like, that is, which isn't often these days), but given the DRM they're trying to force onto CD's, they obviously don't. It remains the only viable option as far as I'm concerned, though, if you want legal music for the best price with the greatest selection, and you want the highest-quality compressed files along with it.

  3. So the old saying is true... by jarich · · Score: 4, Funny
    If we steal it, they will come?

    :)

    --
    Agile Artisans
  4. "sharing" by doowy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    this isn't really 'sharing' as their press releases would have you believe.

    It is 'sharing' as in sharing your bandwidth. You still pay for the download. Wurld Media gets a cut and so do the labels (and presumaby the artists).

    The difference between something like this and iTunes is that they are going to try to sell it with the "p2p" sex-appeal to lure people in.

    Since it is p2p, it will cut down on their bandwidth costs in a big way.

    If the P2P protocol and/or client isn't superior to whats available (for 'free') to people, it won't fly.

    If it IS superior, how long until we see a 'lite' version of their client that authenticates with an alternative server (or none at all) that gets widely distributed and used as a seperate and 'free' p2p network?

    This one might be interesting.

    --
    ..mork
    1. Re:"sharing" by Ubergrendle · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree with your take on the strategy. However, I optimistically see this as a possible building block for a more comprehensive 'on demand' strategy. When I say 'strategy', i mean it as a 'business opportunity in the making' vs 'deliberate action on the part of the labels'.

      #1. Make it p2p so that operating costs are defrayed by subscribers.
      #2. Secure login, unique key/identifier, etc.
      #3. Unlimited access to back catalogue. Variety of bitrates and formats of files allowed.
      #4. Client contains advertisements in way of discrete banners, controlled by p2p service (another source of revenue).
      #5. Monthly fee equivalent roughly to that of a MMORPG, or basic cable/telephone service. Say $20 USD a month. Some respectable caps can be in place (say 10gb a month, or only so much bandwidth per second)
      #6. Tracking mechanisms used to identify # of downloads per file. Artists compensated based on volume of traffic.


      Such a service would be ridicuously popular and successful IMHO. If hundreds of thousands would pay $19.95 a month to play everquest or Ultima online on a indefinite basis, think of the audience available today? Music is a much bigger target audience than MMORG, is easier to deliver, and has longer lasting appeal.

      Record labels, listen to marketing 101. "Market the sizzle, not the steak.". Files = steak. There will ALWAYS be file traders. These people you would never gain as clients no matter what you do. However, convenience = sizzle. Why would someone pay $3.50 for a coffee at Starbucks? Because of the experience. Focus on the experience.

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
    2. Re:"sharing" by nutrock69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So, let me get this straight...

      I buy a song, download it with their app, then I'm considered a sharer. Someone else buys the song, pays the company, then downloads the song from me.

      Am I going to get a "Shipping & Handling" fee from the company for storing the song on my pc for someone else to download? Who's going to be paying me for my bandwidth spike if the song is popular? Am I going to be required to share every song I buy 24/7 so that it's available for others to download when they buy?

      Sounds like a pretty good scam to me. Selling music for someone else and you don't even have to store it on your own servers or use any of your own bandwidth except for the tracker.

      mmm... I smell a patent being filled out...

  5. Paying to Share by 93,000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're paying money to 'share', aren't you really buying rather than sharing?

    It seems like they're bastardising the concept of sharing to exploit the term's popularity.

    --
    Sweet informative mod.
    1. Re:Paying to Share by PhilHibbs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the term "share" was already bastardised by those that like to justify copyright violaton in the name of "sharing".

  6. So, who's gonna be the first.... by Weaselmancer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...to allow a piece of software created by 3 of the "big 4" to run on their system?

    You don't even need to be a tinfoil hat type to see that this is an extremely bad idea. I have no wish to be Pwn3d by the RIAA.

    Can't wait to see what kinda packets people find this thing sending back to its masters.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  7. Doesn't look good by efedora · · Score: 5, Informative

    From Pest Patrol http://www.pestpatrol.com/PestInfo/w/wurldmedia.as p#Overview
    WURLD Media, Inc.

    WurldMedia partners with StreamCast Networks, Inc., developers of Morpheus. A download of Morpheus will result in the installation of components associated with AtomWire and other browser helper objects. Components within a Morpheus installation will carry a variety of developer names within the code, including ESD Technologies, Inc., John Marshall, My Way, Summit Software Company, Wurld Media Inc., and XMLAuthor Inc.

  8. Re:Legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Only if you have a valid 'Forced Restrictions on Expressive Elocution for the Sustained Protection of Entertainment Enterprise Corporate Holdings' aka FREESPEECH License.

  9. How could this possibly work? by finkployd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm making the assumption that this uses DRM and is actually p2p. So how on earth could that possibly work?

    Just a quick primer, DRM (at least in any existing form) is nothing more than public key encryption turned upside down. A private key is generated on your machine and the public key is sent to the server (in the case of itunes or napster v2). The public key is used to encrypt any files you "purchase" so that only the private key can decrypt it. So far so good, but that is just simply public key encryption. What makes it DRM is that the software attempts to "hide" your own private key from you, the rational being that if you can access your own key, you can decrypt the data at will and save it rather than letting the application place all kinds of restrictions on you.

    If this seems like an incredibly ignorant and technologically weak idea it is only because that is exactly what DRM is.

    So how do you pull something like that off in a P2P environment? Who handles keys? Who encrypts stuff and to whom? I can only see this working with a flat fee based system where everyone has access to everything which has been encrypted with the same key. Of course as soon as that one key is "found" (and it will be, it has to be in every player on the network), the whole system falls apart.

    Details on this would be nice (and not too much to ask from a news for nerds site), right now there just seems to be empty marketing blurbs.

    Finkployd