November 3, 2003
Volume 2, Issue 5
New KaZaA "Emerging Artists Channel"
SNL, Cornerband, and Altnet Collaboration
DCIA Charter Member Sharman Networks, Ltd. (SNL) has launched the KaZaA "Emerging Artists Channel," enabling up-and-coming performing artists to promote and sell their music using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology.
Developed with DCIA Charter Member Altnet Inc, the leading provider of secure digital media via P2P technology, and Cornerband.com, a self-service online label for musicians, the Emerging Artists Channel allows independent artists to promote and sell their music directly to an estimated 60 million music fans worldwide.
"More than 75 million songs from over 1,000 emerging artists have been downloaded by KaZaA users in the past 12 months through services provided by Altnet and Cornerband," said Nikki Hemming, CEO of Sharman Networks. "The Emerging Artists Channel recognizes the increasing demand for these services that make it even easier for a new generation of bands to take advantage of low cost promotion and for music lovers to discover great new music. Every great band and musician has to start somewhere, and this is a fantastic new way to be discovered."
According to Scott Beck, CEO of Cornerband, "The concept behind the Emerging Artists Channel is to provide a low cost stepping-stone for growth into the mainstream market -- it's not much to pay for such great exposure. Once a band becomes more established, it can move to more prominent and higher trafficked promotional areas within KaZaA."
Altnet Senior Vice-President Christian von Burkleo said: "It's the new radio, a perfect win-win for independent musicians and music lovers. Independent musicians get a low-cost way to promote their music to a massive audience and KaZaA users get to discover great new music."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 As we continue to develop the second of three business models focused on commercial distribution of music via P2P technologies, we thought it would be useful at this juncture to answer "frequently asked questions."
These represent issues that have been raised during our ongoing private meetings with leaders of the music industry, and sharing the answers should enable those with whom we have not been able to meet personally to participate on an informed basis.
Our objective is to ensure the highest possible quality in completing each of these proposed business solutions to the current crisis on an expedited basis.
Can digital rights management (DRM) work with music tracks in P2P? Yes. Currently available DRM technology can enable content to be file-shared among multiple users with licenses and associated payments required post-download by each new user in order to access the content.
Can P2P search results give priority treatment to licensed music tracks? Yes. Currently available commercial solutions can put licensed content ahead of unknown files in search results, and identify which files are legitimate and which are unknown.
Can that technique be effective in displacing unauthorized P2P music tracks and reducing their distribution? Yes. A large enough quantity of licensed content can effectively displace unknown content rendering its access inconvenient, similarly to the way traditional search engines have displaced irrelevant results.
Can P2P users be incentivized to share only licensed content? Yes. Currently available commercial programs can reward consumers for sharing exclusively licensed content, whether they themselves have yet acquired the licenses for such content, thereby further reducing the traffic of unauthorized content.
Can P2P be used to stream as well as download music tracks? Yes. Currently available software features in leading P2P applications can allow users to preview content by streaming it prior to or in lieu of acquisition by downloading it.
Can P2P traffic be maintained during conversion to a commercially authorized distribution environment? Yes. This can be accomplished with a balanced approach that combines attractive pricing and packaging solutions with the introduction of monitoring and related control mechanisms.
Can P2P music tracks be monitored? Yes - in the near future. File identification technology is coming that can be applied off-consumer-premises to track registered copyrighted content distributed via P2P, with or without DRM protection, and regardless of which P2P software application is being used.
Can consumer-introduced as well as label-seeded music tracks in P2P be monitored? Yes - in the near future. The file identification technology described above can be further modified to work with P2P content originated by consumers, allowing copyright owners to be compensated for their content entered into P2P by consumers as well as themselves.
Can copyright owners of music tracks determine their own pricing, packaging, and promotion of content with P2P monitoring? Yes. Although a statutory rate would be the simplest approach, well-executed marketing communications programs coupled with advanced billing systems can support variable pricing.
Can consumer privacy be protected with P2P music track monitoring? Yes. This can be accomplished in a manner similar to the ways pay-per-view (PPV) and video-on-demand (VOD) delivery of movies via cable and satellite track and bill consumers for specific movie titles.
Can unlicensed music tracks be filtered out of P2P distribution? Yes - in the near future. Technology is also coming that, as the final element of control in P2P distribution, can be applied off-consumer-premises, in addition to metering and identifying consumer-introduced content, and can also block the distribution of unauthorized undesirable content.
Can the implementation of universal P2P music track monitoring be done in such a way that consumers can't get around it? Yes. This can be accomplished, for example, if all ISPs serving a given territory participate, ideally concurrently, so that all consumers are covered, again regardless of what P2P software application they may be using.
As noted in our previous newsletter, if you are a music rights holder, whether or not you are in the process of actively considering DCIA Membership, please get in touch with me at 888-864-DCIA or marty@dcia.info to express your ideas for the P2P business model currently in development. Our goal is to complete input gathering for this second-of-three business models this week.
Introducing The Claria Corporation
The Gator Corporation Renames Itself
"We feel that the Claria Corporation name will allow us to better communicate the expanding breadth of offerings that we provide to consumers and advertisers," CEO and President Jeff McFadden said in announcing the name change.
Claria operates three units. GAIN Publishing includes Gator software and provides support to other software companies such as video compression company DivXNetworks. GAIN Network is the division that delivers targeted pop-up advertisements to 38 million people who use GAIN Publishing software. Feedback Research provides online research and Web analytics based on data from its ad network.
The company has eight offices in the United States and Europe.
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