Buzzsonic.com

After months of quiet background development and some (mainly) unsubstantiated stories more recently, ex-Napster founder and P2P poster boy Shawn Fanning finally broke the veil of silent mystery surrounding his new P2P start-up Snocap today with the official launch of the company with a press release and the unveiling of the company website which filled in some of the blanks about their proposed plans for the much talked about new venture.

Fanning and major record labels are hoping that the peer-to-peer filtering software that his company have been developing will legitimize the revolution Napster started back in 1999. Snocap claims to be the first music licensing platform that will allow music download services and P2P networks alike to allow any track to be delivered or shared in the knowledge that the copyright holder gets paid. The software works by attaching a digital fingerprint to media that determines whether it can be shared and at what price.

Snocap has developed a proprietary content identification service system using technology licensed from Philips Research Labs which uses audio fingerprinting and scans downloads as they pass through the Snocap system and compares them to music in the company’s database. If there’s a match, the royalty rate is decided and usage rights applied. Philips have been working on the fingerprinting technology for a number of years and it is already in use by mobile music specialist Musiwave and music recognition database Gracenote.

“There are some good authorized online music services but they have limited content and a comparatively small number of users. There are unauthorized services that have content and users orders of magnitude higher, but the service they provide is inferior and they are at odds with rights holders. Snocap is the means to bridge that divide for the consumer.” said Fanning.

The company also confirmed rumours that it has signed a landmark agreement with Universal Music Group to provide technology and database services for the online distribution of the company’s entire catalogue. Universal has already begun to register its catalogue with Snocap. EMI and Sony BMG are reportedly in active negotiations.

Snocap received a $10 million round of financing led by WaldenVC, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that has a strong focus on digital media companies, and Morgenthaler Ventures, a leading national venture capital firm focused on information technology, internet services and life sciences. According to WaldenVC General Partner Art Berliner, “Snocap represents the future of online music. We are excited to work with Shawn Fanning and his team in greatly expanding the boundaries of the digital media universe.”

The Snocap team is comprised of three of the old coding team from the Napster days, Fanning himself, Ali Ayder and Jordan Mendelson and headed up by venture capitalist veteran Ron Conway, who also invested in the original Napster.

The Snocap system will incorporate its technology into various P2P clients, In order for it to work, peer-to-peer networks must agree to build Snocap’s technology into their software, wether that will include current market leaders like Kazaa, Grokster, eDonkey and Morpheus depends on those companies agreeing to dumping their old ‘revenue model’ of free. So far the first P2P application using Snocap technology is expected to be Mashboxx, with an early 2005 launch date.

‘Rival’ P2P filter Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye told the L.A. Times, “There will be peer-to-peers that are able to make that transition and compete, but technology is not the problem; it’s the business model, how do you convert somebody who’s getting something for free?”

Related Stories

Shawn Fanning’s Snocap Touts Vision of P2P Heaven [the Register]
Napster Founder Goes Legit [MercuryNews.com]
Napster Founder Basks in Funding, Label Support [CNet News]
Shawn Fanning’s New Tune:Snocap [BusinessWeek.com]
Napster Creator Touts Legal File Sharing [Forbes.com]
Napster Creator Reveals Next Step [BBC News]
SNOCAP Melts Barriers to Growth in the Digital Music Marketplace [BusinessWire.com-Official Press Release]
EMI Records Join the Snocap Queue [MusicbizNews24.com]
Napster Founder in Major Label Talks [MusicbizNews24.com]
Paid P2P Options Gain More Traction [MusicbizNews24.com]
Content Identification Audio Fingerprinting Technology [Philips Research]
A Highly Robust Audio Fingerprinting System [Philips Research] 9pg PDF

Napster Background

Napsters Back, What Did Silicon Valley Learn? (Oct 2003)
the Download on Napster (August 2003) [Alwayson-Network.com]
Napster Becomes Dot-goner After Sale Blocked (Sept 2002) [MercuryNews.com]
Napsters CEO Splits on Sour Note (May 2002) [BusinessWeek.com]
Inside Napster (August 2000) [BusinessWeek.com]
It’s a Rad, Rad Napster World [Darkridge.com]
All the Rave : The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster [JosephMenn.com]