A Collaborative Distribution Model for Music

Collaborative Content Distribution

Why not create a DRM-free P2P network where it is nearly impossible to trade copyrighted works that haven’t been cleared for trading? Students could access this network and be assured that they are operating within the legal parameters set by the creators and owners of music, television, movies and books. In addition, the students could trade the music and videos with their friends and be financially rewarded for helping to distribute the digital content to their friends. This financial incentive would give them something that they don’t have through the other P2P networks – a revenue stream that they can then use to buy other music/movies or withdraw into their bank account to help pay for tuition or college text books.

Full disclosure: We’re biased, because this is exactly what Bitmunk was built to do. We wrote about the concept of Collaborative Content Distribution a few years ago. It was designed to address this digital distribution problem in exactly the way described above – in a fair and just manner that rewards content creators, publishers, distributors and music fans alike. Most attempts to address the P2P music piracy issue ignore the music fan – ours makes the music fan a fundamental part of the solution. When a song is downloaded from a student’s computer, they get a cut of the sale price.

Since Choruss has been proposing a $5-$10 monthly charge for unlimited access to music, that money could be placed into a student’s account and then the industry could agree on a blanket per-song price for music – $0.50 would effectively allow students to buy 2 albums per month (at the $10/month rate). They could also leave prices as they are ($0.85 per song) and depend on P2P purchases from the student’s computer, or the students using their debit cards, to create additional revenue for the purchase of additional music.

This approach has a few advantages over all Collective Licensing schemes:

• Students are given the choice regarding which pieces of music they purchase.
• Students are given a financial incentive to exchange music legally.
• Everybody is financially rewarded for their part – artists, record labels, distributors and music fans.

The system described above has been in operation for almost 3 years now via the Bitmunk service. The part that is missing is large industry involvement, but mostly because we wanted to make sure the service was stable before approaching the larger music labels. We will be releasing the Bitmunk 3.0 peer-to-peer sales service in the coming months, which will enable peer-to-peer purchases of music from within a web browser and make it much easier to participate in this new approach to music distribution.

Our hope is that the music industry will finally understand that they don’t need to fight their fans on the issue of peer-to-peer music distribution. We have proven that the technology works, that there is a solid business model behind it, and that it is possible to reward everybody that takes part in such a system.

We have done our part to create the technology platform and business model for this new method of content distribution. It is now up to the RIAA, MPAA, and ultimately the artists and publishers, to acknowledge that a new approach is needed and to move forward with some form of collaborative content distribution.