p2pnet.net News - As a teenager, Shawn Fanning quite literally revolutionized the world of music with his Napster p2p – peer-to-peer – file sharing program.

Big Music couldn’t them, and can’t today, stand the pain of competition offered through p2p and succeeded in having Napster I killed off.

Owned by Roxio, the troubled Napster II is a pale imitation of Fanning’s original software masterpiece that let computer users search for, and share and swap, files through a centralized file server.

But the wheel has turned full circle and Fanning is back in business, and now working with France’s UMG, one the companies which saw Napster I buried, and one of the members of the Big Four record label cartel.

The remaining three, EMI (UK), Warner (US) and Sony-BMG (Japan, Germany) will soon follow, or so Fanning hopes.

Sony Music Entertainment boss Andrew Lack alluded to Fanning’s "ground-breaking work" in developing systems able to identify and filter copyrighted material, "from P2P systems like Kazaa" during a speech at an ‘Entertainment Law Initiative’.

Lack was talking about Snocap, a proprietary Content Identification Service (CIS) that uses audio fingerprinting technology licensed from industry leader Philips Royal Labs to identify, register and track music that is available for licensing.

It allows artists and labels to find live, remixed and unreleased works and then include them in their catalog for sale. And it allows retailers to “enable and authorize” transactions on their networks, says Fanning, going on:

“There are some good authorized online music services but they have limited content and a comparatively small number of users. There are unauthorized services that have content and users orders of magnitude higher, but the service they provide is inferior and they are at odds with rights holders. SNOCAP is the means to bridge that divide for the consumer."

Founded by Fanning, Jordan Mendelson and Ron Conway, Snocap, “envisions a world where consumers can discover, share and purchase music from a massively deep, almost infinite catalogue – constantly updated with new and old releases, live, out-of-print tracks, and more," says Fanning who as well as founding the company, is also its chief strategy officer.

"By giving record labels and artists what they need to deliver their music over any digital platform, including peer-to-peer networks, we are finally realizing the full potential of the Internet as a source of music for fans everywhere."

Consumers will, "finally have authorized options with comparable selection to today’s file sharing services, removing the threat of litigation, spoofed downloads, and the risk of spyware and other unwanted advertising," says the company.

"SNOCAP will eliminate degraded and poorly recorded files thus insuring higher quality and a better overall consumer experience.”

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See:-
ground-breaking work - Sony boss lauds Napster’s Fanning, p2pnet, February 16, 2004
magnitude higher – SNOCAP Melts Barriers to Growth in the Digital Music Marketplace, Snocap, December 3, 2004

This entry was posted on Friday, December 3rd, 2004 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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