News.com has a lengthy 3-page article on Shawn Fanning’s new venture, Snocap. After years of development the company is coming out of the stealth mode and has apparently already secured a distribution deal with Universal Music, promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight. Both News.com and Associated Press are skimpy on the details, but apparently Snocap will market the technology that will (a) sniff out the files shared illegally and (b) fill the peer-to-peer networks with licensed content and serve as a clearing house for the ventures who want to license digital music, but don’t want to deal with gazillion of music labels.
While it’s not easy to figure out what exactly the company does, it gets even more difficult to think of the problem they’re trying to solve. With the immediate availability of iTunes Music Store, Napster, MSN Music and probably dozens more, those who want to buy their music legally and pay for it, already do it. People might have preference between Napster, Microsoft, Apple, Real, Wal-Mart, MusicMatch, etc. but the market seems to be rather well-served and price wars between Real and Apple prove there’s some healthy kick-ass competition going on. Never mind that today’s market is worth hundreds of millions, while you’ve got some huge multi-billion-dollar folks like Microsoft and Apple eyeing it as if we’re talking about microprocessors ($30 billion market) and spending money on promotions and what not.
Basically, those who download their music off the peer-to-peer networks, do it for two reasons: (a) they cannot find it anywhere else (indie bands) or (b) they don’t really want to pay for it. No one in their right mind today would argue that they would buy music legally if such stores existed. Such stores do exist, so going to peer-to-peer is not an excuse anymore. And Shawn Fanning’s new venture wants to convert that audience into loyal and paying subscribers by installing the illegal content sniffer and offering a scheme for license acquisition. Which is a tough game, because most of the peer-to-peer users turn to their Kazaa for precisely the opposite reasons.
In conclusion, it’s impossible to see how Snocap solves any problem or adds any value to the digital music market. Trying to open another Apple iTMS or Napster and pitch it as “more efficient peer-to-peer” won’t work, since it’s 2004, and most of the Americans simply have enough bandwidth to get their music files from Apple or Napster or MSN, and they don’t really care whether the download mechanism uses peering or HTTP.
Michael Regan from Associated Press started reviewing MyFi, a portable satellite radio receiver, treating it as a competitor to iPod, but then admitted two devices are quite different. For $350 and a $10-a-month subscription the buyer gets access to XM satellite radio stations and ability to record the stream to 128 MB of built-in flash. There’s no way to transfer the recorded content to the computer and vice versa. The review recommends waiting out for lower price and better features.
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