Now that you've brought up P2P, some news from the wonderful world of legit P2P music sharing. Legit P2P firm Mashboxx has appointed a new CEO - former Napster and Universal Music Group executive Mike Bebel. He will take over the role currently filled by former Grokster boss Wayne Ross, who will step up into a chairman's type role. As previously reported, Mashboxx hope to become pioneers in the legit P2P space, using song tracking software being developed by the original Napster founder Shawn Fanning, and, possibly, by acquiring the struggling Grokster to give them a launch customer base.
Talking of Fanning and his wonderful song tracking software, his company, Snocap, has finalised deals with independent labels V2, Beggars / XL and Matador, widening the size of the catalogue that the Snocap technology is able to track. The independents join most of the majors in backing Fanning's system, where by kids pay a subscription to file-share, a cut of which goes back to the labels based on how often each track is shared - Snocap's technology monitoring which songs are being swapped.
With most of the music industry now backing Snocap's system, the next challenge for Fanning is to persuade the P2P companies to adopt the subscription model. While newer names like Mashboxx have been set up to do just that, it is the big established P2Ps like Kazaa and eDonkey which control access to much of the market. Snocap are hoping that recent court decisions against the makers of P2P software will persuade them to go the Snocap-enabled subscription route. Or that recent legal decisions will make those companies' financial situation so unstable that the Snocap-friendly firms like Mashboxx will be able to take them over. Assuming the big P2Ps do adopt the subscription system, it then remains to be seen if consumers sign up to the new pay-to-share services, or whether new P2P networks will appear from the grass roots that continue to supply the facility to share music for free.
Elsewhere in legit P2P news, and back on home turf, Music Week report that London based Playlouder have postponed the launch of their label-approved P2P platform after ending its relationship with Bulldog Broadband. The Playlouder model would have bundled the P2P subscription fee into a broadband internet package to be run by Bulldog.