Remember Shawn Fanning? He’s the guy who created Napster and as a
result, created the world of file sharing. Well now he’s back with a
new venture called SNOCAP:

SNOCAP offers the first end-to-end solution for digital licensing and
copyright management services through an innovative music registry and
clearinghouse. SNOCAP enables record labels and individual artists to
make the full depth of their catalogs available through authorized
peer-to-peer networks and online retailers.

Basically, SNOCAP aims to “create a central global clearinghouse for
digital music — a back-end system equipped with technology to monitor,
authorize, and monetize the swapping of copyrighted tracks.” So a
record label would register music with SNOCAP who would in turn work
with P2P applications. After first reading about it, Fanning’s new idea
seems like a good one. And he’s got a lot going for him – for instance,
it is widely reported that the record labels are unhappy with Apple’s
monopoly on downloading music.

At the same time however, I don’t think SNOCAP’s vision is the way
of the future for music. The problem with all legitimate file sharing
applications today is that they are not designed with the downloader in
mind. Sure, it’s great that I can search for a song, but why can’t I
search for that song with a certain bitrate? If I buy an album, why do
I have to download the tracks individually? And most importantly, why
oh why do all the legitimate services ignore BitTorrent?

Sure Apple has had great success with iTunes, selling over 100
million tracks. Yet I bet there are still a vast majority of iTunes
customers who would rather download the music for free, and would if it
was easy enough to do. I still think music’s future lies in giving the
music away for free, and making money off related products and services.

Read: Business 2.0