p2pnet - rss feed: Making you pay for p2p
p2pnet.net news:- “It’s a foregone conclusion that in 2007, we’ll be flooded with even more online advertising drek than ever before,” p2pnet posted two days before the end of 2006.
Now we’re into 2007 and, “Qtrax today announced that it has reached an agreement with SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT through which the music company will provide access to its music catalog to Qtrax”.
They’ve got the right idea. Remember SpiralFrog, the ad-supported ‘p2p’ venture touted to take the corporate music world by storm but didn’t?
Ex-SpiralFrog ceo Robin Kent and chief salesman Lance Ford formed another company called Rebel Digital, and they say they’re now the main advertising sales guys for Qtrax.
“If you wish to reach a young target audience who have access to pretty much all the music that’s ever been produced the P2P network is the only area to tap, that’s where music fans live and breathe and they are not going to change their habits anytime soon,” says Ford. “For anyone trying to attract this audience with anything less than a P2P offering they should simply pack up and go home as they will not compete.”
Good thinking.
Qtrax started out in Australia. Which other Australian company also had much the same idea, exploit p2p to get ahead? Ah, Yes. Australia’s Sharman Networks, with friends and associates Brilliant Digital Entertainment.
Sharman owns Kazaa, the newly corporately baptised p2p application implicated in many (most?) of the RIAA sue ‘em all cases and which itself is now on the wrong end of a class action.
Sharman and friends had always wanted to be on the corporate crew, an ambition they finally achieved, but not before forking over some $115 million after being sued by their new friends.
Qtrax, too, was once on the wrong side. But these days it’s owned by owned by Brilliant Technologies Corporation, which in turn owns LTDnetwork, “recipient of the 2006 DCIA Trendsetter’s Award”. The DCIA (Distributed Computing Industry Association) is a so-called trade group originally financed by Sharman Networks.
Anyhow, “Qtrax works much like any file-sharing program, and it will search the Gnutella network,” explains The New York Times. “But Qtrax will only display files that it has permission to play, then bring up relevant advertising, much as Google does for search terms” and, “Listeners will be able to hear songs a certain number of times - probably five in the case of most major label acts
Ultimately, “Qtrax plans to make most of its money selling advertising,” says the story, quoting president and ceo Allan Klepfisz as saying, “Our challenge is to demonstrate that ad-supported peer-to-peer is lucrative enough that everyone is going to be happy. The real issue for the industry is that right now there are all these people paying nothing for music.”
Qtrax will initially have a revenue-sharing arrangement with labels but eventually, “it will have to pay the labels a royalty for each time a user plays a song, which could cost quite a bit relative to ad sales,” observes the NYT.
Brilliant Technologies Corporation recently named Andrew Nibley as the head its Qtrax advisory board.
Nibley was chairman and ceo of a New York-based advertising, interactive and promotions firm. Before that, he ran GetMusic, the online music and media company backed by BMG and the Universal Music Group, and is an ex-president of Reuters New Media.
Also See:
p2pnet - p2p advertising for 2007?, December 29, 2007
but didn’t - SpiralFrog at Midem, Jabnuary 26, 2007
wrong end - Kazaa sued in class action, December 7, 2006
The New York Times - New Model for Sharing: Free Music With Ads, April 23, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Until they start to put their songs online with marketing ads or however they want to pay for it…WITHOUT involving the consumer…they will continue to lose sales.
P2p is here to stay and people ARE used to getting songs for free. It is up to the music industry to adapt or die.
This time, it is the consumer that is in control….not the cartels….and with the consumer having free p2p versus paid music that only plays on your ipod….the choice is clear for most.
If the cartels really want to compete with p2p, then they had better come up with some kind of license that lets advertisments pay for files and keep it FREE to the consumer!
That is the ONLY way they are gonna compete….anything less is just dreaming…..
April 24th, 2007 at 7:47 am
I’d be up for paying for p2p - *if* the money collected went to artists, not johnny-come-lately intermediaries whose only contribution is to make existing p2p networks worse, either with some ‘expires after 5 plays’ DRM crap or advertising.
April 25th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
The problem is…HOW do you know WHAT your money is going for? I would rather have ads pay for it myself…then I wouldn’t care who got what as I would not be involved!