Staying with digital type stuff, Morpheus, the P2P network run by LA based StreamCast Networks, has added a pay-to-download strand, which means each time the network's users search for a song they will be invited to buy legitimate content as well as download unofficial tracks from other users' MP3 collections.
While P2P owners have been piloting pay-to-download add-ons for a while - with AltNet offering a similar service via the Kazaa network - the need for P2P networks to have a legitimate sales strand has become more urgent since that previously reported US Supreme Court ruling that said that P2P owners could be held liable for the copyright theft they enable.
StreamCast et al will be hoping that if their P2P platforms have a legit sales strand they might be able to sidestep that liability in some way. Or, if they can prove the value of legit sales via P2P to the major record companies, then the content owners won't instigate legal action in the first place.
Of course it will be impossible to prove the value of such sales without getting at least one major record company on board, and that will be no easy task. One of the people trying to persuade label execs to do just that is Morpheus VP of Business Development Elizabeth Cowley. She was keen to point out the value of her company's proposition to the labels, telling reporters: "A recent Forbes article noted that 70 percent of digital music customers had first sampled music on P2P. Further, the BBC stated that file sharers spent four and a half times more money on digital music than others".
Whether or not Morpheus subscribers really are interested in paying for music accessible via the P2P network, and whether the record labels have any interest in finding out, all remains to be seen.