Buzzsonic.com

According to reports in Billboard, in a move that sets the stage for the emergence of major-label-sanctioned peer-to-peer services, Universal Music Group has become the first of the top four music companies to ink a licensing deal with Snocap, the new P2P filtering venture from Napster founder Shawn Fanning, several of his old colleagues and backed by angel investor Ron Conway–who also initially funded Napster.

According to the WSJ (via IntesaTrade) UMG has signed a deal to license its catalog of 150,000 songs. It is unclear exactly how a Snocap-powered peer-to-peer service would work, although people close to the deal say that one possibility is that the service would allow users to share a low-quality copy of a licensed song for free, and would grant them access to a higher quality version only after they paid a fee. Snocap could also provide shopping cart and search services.

Snocap is a technology embedded in a P2P network to block sharing of unauthorized works, including unlicensed music and pornography and facilitate commercial transactions. Snocap has been working on ways to identify songs, as they are traded through a file-swapping network, including using a technique called “audio fingerprinting,” which monitors the sonic characteristics of music files.

That fingerprinting tool could be integrated into the file-swapping software itself in several different ways, sources said. When a file is being downloaded, the software could check its “fingerprint” and then compare it against a database Snocap operates, for example. Once an identification is made, the download could be blocked, unless the computer user pays a fee, as if they were downloading a song from iTunes or another digital song store.

BMG -Sony were said to be in talks last month with a new legal P2P venture from Grokster founder Wayne Rosso, tentatively called ‘Mashboxx’ which is also rumoured to be powered by the Snocap back end technology. Major labels have so far resisted all attempts at licencing repetoire for distribution on P2P networks like KaZaa (and in particular its licensed content offshoot AltNet).

Related Reading

Music Rebels Seek to Tame P2P [CNet News]
Napsters Fanning Has Sno-capped Vision [CNet News]
Downloads: The Next Generation [Business Week]
Sony-BMG, Grokster in Talks to Launch New File Sharing Venture [Detroit News]
Hollywood-Suing The Way To Profits [Red Herring]
Music’s Brighter Future [Economist.com] 6pg PDF
The Future of the Music Industry [PBS.org]
P2P Group Seeks Cross-Industry Detente [CNet News]
A&M Records vs. Napster [UCLA Online Institute]