RSSSnocap Pushes Legal P2P Downloading
By Ed Oswald | Published June 13, 2005, 12:20 PM
Snocap, the newest venture headed by original Napster founder Shawn Fanning, announced on Monday it would open its service to independent artists and labels to allow them to register their songs to receive payment when they are traded over peer-to-peer networks.
Fanning's service allows P2P networks to curb illicit downloads by blocking unauthorized versions of songs and replacing them with a version that carries digital rights management and must be paid for in order to play.
The service has already penned deals with three major record labels including Universal, EMI and Sony. Talks are continuing with a fourth major label, Warner Music Group. Snocap has also finalized deals with several smaller independent labels as well.
Only one file-sharing network, Mashboxx, uses Snocap technology. However, the company hopes to sign bigger networks such as Kazaa and LimeWire to further legitimize its technology as a way to bring the ever-increasing problem of illicit file-sharing under control.
It's not clear if such Snocap-enabled limitations would be accepted by P2P users themselves. But if the technology becomes mainstream, it could mean and end to the seemingly endless stream of court battles and lawsuits between the file-sharing and record industry, while still keeping the concept of P2P networks intact.
"[Snocap] is key to creating a world of authorized peer-to-peer networks that will attract music fans en masse - enabling consumers to share and discover new artists in much the same fashion as they did with old P2P - but done in a way that respects the rights holder," Fanning said in a statement.
Path of least resistance, folks.
ITunes is super-easy to buy from, so a lot of people buy rather than look for free music. It's a fraction, but the truth is that the price is the problem. Maybe I won't go $.99, but if you get a song less than a stamp, for example, I might just buy it. If it's easier for me to pay $0.37 to just get it in high quality from a good network than to try to find a good freebie on a P2P, you make a sale. Maybe it's 10c, maybe it's 50c, maybe it's somewhere in there, but there's a tipping point.
What the industry is struggling with is the fact that music costs a couple dollars per disc, and the distribution of discs is several dollars per disc. Their business model had been based around margins from the distribution of media. Now that the media isn't necessary anymore, they need to realize "it's the price, stupid". Music isn't $20 per album anymore, because there's no physical album anymore.
If you took every part of the music industry and found the cost for everything from creation to artist to media creation to distribution, and then subtracted out all of the media part, add in some server costs, and found out that music-au-natural costs $3-5 per "album", and thus less than a dollar per song, you have found a starting point.
Music industry, you've been de-regulated via the masses. ;)
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|They should let you play about two-four songs from the same artist before you need to purchase any songs from them. That would be an acceptable compromise to let people see if they like the music.
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|Good. Hopefully, this will help stop piracy at least a little. Everyone loses when property is stolen.
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|The reason p2p was so popular in the first place was it was a way to get music for free. the moment you make people start paying is when they will stop using it. nice try Snocap, but futal effort, if you ask me.
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|Sadley I believe you are correct. I wish this would work, but it probably won't.
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