Napster Founder’s Next Tech Venture

Shawn Fanning’s Napster software enabled countless music fans to swap songs on the Internet for free, turning him into the recording industry’s enemy No. 1 in the process.

Five years later, now heading San Francisco-based Snocap Inc., Fanning is touting a new technology designed to help the music companies who once sued him into submission cash in on file-sharing between computer users, also known as peer-to-peer.

Rough details of the venture, in the works the past four years, surfaced in recent weeks, but Fanning spoke publicly about it for the first time Thursday, hailing it as a means to create a licensed online music service with the nearly unlimited selection of music now available on file-sharing networks.

Snocap’s system would allow record labels to manage whether computer users could swap their recordings over file-sharing software that has been equipped with the technology. Computer users would also be given the option to pay to download songs.

This would purportedly afford some manner of assurance to record labels that unauthorized versions of their music, specifically the tracks they register with Snocap, would not be shared, while also allowing the freewheeling exchange of other files, Fanning said.

The technology employs an acoustic fingerprinting system to identify tracks and compare them to a database of licensed songs submitted by record labels. The program also would filter out spoofed, damaged or unlicensed versions of songs in the database, Fanning said.

Record companies would also be able to specify an array of restrictions, including how many times a track can be played on a computer before the user is required to buy it, or whether it can be burned to CD, or shared, Fanning said.

Source: pollstar.com

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