Petteri Pyyny
16 Nov 2004 14:47
World's second largest record label, Universal Music Group (part of Vivendi), has agreed to license its entire music catalog to a small start-up that aims to provide online music purchasing mechanisms to the P2P world. The first service about to use the technology is expected to launch in January.
The company that runs the technology is called Snocap and the first P2P service set to use the technology is called Mashboxx. To make things bit more interesting, the man behind the Snocap is quite familiar one -- Shawn Fanning, the guy who built the first-ever P2P application, Napster that launched the whole P2P hysteria and has caused many sleepless night to record label executives over the last five years.
And, just to define the Universal's apparent change of hearts bit further, the man behind the Mashboxx -- Snocap's first client -- is the former president of Grokster, Wayne Rosso. So, basically two of the best-known P2P advocates making business together with the world's second largest record label..
The Snocap's service basically provides users a way to distribute legal material over P2P networks and also allows them to purchase tracks from Universal's catalog of 150,000 tracks. But, in my opinion, by shooting itself to a leg, Universal has insisted not to allow Snocap's service to be used in any P2P application that allows distribution of illegal music files. Without such decision, Snocap's service could be bolted on Kazaa, etc apps and when user is about to start downloading a track from the P2P network, the service would offer him/her a way to purchase the track legally instead of downloading it from the P2P. But as Universal doesn't want to see that kind of hybrid to appear in the marketplace, it seems that Mashboxx is simply going to compete against iTunes and other online music retailers. However, as the details are bit blurry so far, everything said related to the upcoming service is simply speculative.
Source: Miami Herald