Mobile P2P Takes Its Baby Steps, Labels Interested
Grokster may be taking a walk to its grave, but P2P distribution is rapidly
morphing into new areas. While labels are slowly opening their catalogs to
sanctioned P2P services, new sharing technologies are also hitting the
mobile world. That has labels interested, with the mobile P2P space just
getting off the ground.
Cell phone manufacturers and service carriers, smelling a major business
opportunity in mobile music, have been working overtime to establish
themselves as players in the new music business. As the file-sharing wars
have raged over the last several years, manufacturers and carriers have
noticed a certain synergy between swapping songs and the capabilities of the
phone networks they've spent many years and billions of dollars building.
They're eager to start connecting the dots, and companies like Melodeo, a
maker of phone-specific P2P applications, are ready to help them do it.
Melodeo has partnered with Warner Music Group and EMI, and recently provided
the software that supported Rogers Wireless' P2P music marketing rollout in
Canada. According to Melodeo senior director Stan Sorensen, the company is
talking with US service providers as well.
For tech companies, the upside of this scenario is pretty clear, but what
about the labels? Isn't it exactly this vision of the future that label
executives have been fighting against all these years? As it turns out, this
is another one of those cases where the devil is in the details. Mobile P2P
differs in several critical ways from the anarchy of internet file sharing.
First, unlike the internet, cell phone networks are privately owned and
operated; the carriers decide who gets to use them, how they get to use
them, and what they get to use them for. Network operators have the ability
to track and analyze all the data moving over the system, and due to
911-related functions built into the network, they can even locate suspected
pirates geographically. Perhaps the most important difference, however, is
that all involved now have the lessons of the last 5 or 6 years to guide
them. As Melodeo's Sorensen says, "Operators and labels have learned from
the free sharing days and are starting from the premise that there's money
to be made."
Story by news analyst Michael Baker.
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