Former Napster owner Shawn Fanning is apparently looking for money to develop a new app which would recognize copyrighted songs on p2p networks and let the owners price them for downloading, say unconfirmed reports.

Fanning's newest idea would use audio fingerprinting to recognize songs on a p2p network and, "As the user submits the song, it would be checked against a database at Fanning's company to see whether it is copyrighted," says a July 8Los Angeles Times story going on, "If it is, the song couldn't be distributed without payment."

The story also says Fanning has been consulting for Roxio while also pursuing his new file-sharing venture independently.

"Record-company executives say Fanning has been making the rounds of the major labels in recent weeks, demonstrating his technology and urging them to invest in and endorse his system," says the Times, adding, "If they do, he has told the labels, he will ask Kazaa and other leading peer-to-peer networks to sign on as well. 'It's fantastic, but it only works if Kazaa goes along with it,' said a label executive who asked not to be named. He said his label was impressed with Fanning's demonstration and is reviewing the plan."

Spokesmen for companies "distributing Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster" said they hadn't been contacted.

What we really need is a audiogalaxy type p2p. One where it wasnt dependant on any one user being online. If the song was listed you could download it. I found Napster ****ed the big banana for downloading, having to always refresh and a major pain at times like that download cant be completed cause the person or persons went offline arrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhh

That is not a bad idea. I would not mind paying for a per song basis. I don't want to pay for a CD of crap with 1 or 2 good songs. So long as after I PAY for the download I can play it on my PC, car, stereo, ect.

sign on with Fanning, uh, no! never, I'm keeping my self out of his jumbled up mess. Napster stunk anayway

The problem with this is that the record companies are not going to get the MONEY they want, they want the amount of MONEY they are getting from CD sales and other sales, and seeing themselves make money through this way, probably is not where they want to be. Atleast this shows that the RIAA is decreasing in size, meaning other independent music is already affecting there sales because they have to compete with it and FREE music.

I thought the whole point was to avoid the costs, I hope that this doesn’t take off and the other companies avoid joining the alliance for financial reasons, although saying that, if it did take off, then I am sure there would be other free P2P clients around to fill the void, and we start all over again., you can’t stop P2P.

For me, it's all about what they plan to charge. If the price is right, I don't have a problem paying. But I've still got to be able to play it my way.

With AG, a person who had the song to be on in order for you to download it, unless the song was hosted by AG. What you mentioned, TameasDust wasn't really accurate.

In my opinion it won't quite work. I download zip/rar/other archives nowdays with the whole albums . Idea of going into these zip files does not have a chance either. The person who shares it might just password protect it and put the password into the file comments (or something like this).

wasnt totally accurate audiogalaxy had a meter that would tell you the chance of getting the song ... not like most out there as in are you a trusting person.

seems i mention paying on a per song basis in another news item. based totally on the quality of the download. you pay more for a 192 or a 320 download than you would for a 128 of the same song. seems that would be a better system.

of course i would have to get a credit card or use paypal ... bummer.

no way in hell or heaven I'll pay for music...it's been free for four years it should stay that way

"no way in hell or heaven I'll pay for music" Folks, it's statements like that that give the RIAA the ammunition they need to go after P2P. Sure we all want something for nothing. Let's call a spade a spade, that is stealing. Paying per song seems quite reasonable. If I make a chair and you want it, I expect to be paid. I won't force you to buy 13 chairs if all you want is 1.

The problem with letting the "owner" (most cases one of the labels) set the price is they'll probably charge obsene prices for older stuff, but charge less for the teeny bopper music.

I support the flat fee system. $10 a month for unlimited downloads and no restrictions. Per song just won't work 'cause they almost always encrypt them.

Of course the labels aren't going to like this. They want you to buy the crap songs to get the good songs. When are they going to wise up and go back to the days of the 45 that commonly had 3 good songs on the A side and the crappy songs on the B side? Just get the makers of slot loading CD players to adapt them to the small 24 minute CDs now available and it could be done. Then they could provide quality music at a fair price and everyone would be happy.

Wow...

Napster has led to my discovery of some great music.

But Fanning, you have disgraced us. You have given into the machine. Shame on you.

"let the owners price them for downloading"

I assume he means the record labels by owners.

Their flawless reasoning gave us $20 a cd presently. So that would mean, according to the flawless logic of the record industry execs, each song should round out to around $20 a piece.
After all there is the cost to think about. You have to pay for the electricity to run the computer to convert and serve the file. There is hardware to buy and maintain and people that will have to be around to run it.....blah blah blah. Another way for them to monopolize and jack up prices like they've always done. The difference is there will be alternately free content along side the expensive stuff. I don't think they are intelligent enough to discover that their stuff won't move since they want your life savings for it. I can hear them complaining again about some stupid reason that their sales are being undermined.

What about ownership of the music? The idea that the label owns any portion of the music is wrong. Music will not be worth buying at a large outlet while the artists are being raped. The idea's that the RIAA has expressed to consumers is a disgrace to us all. They want to hack our computers, disable and delete files, sue us for millions of dollars, and call us crooks? To hell with them.

Sadly, there is alot more at stake to all this Mp3 tar and feathering. Notice that some of the "big record labels" are part of AOL! That should be a dead give away. Obviously a very large campaign to demonize mp3 trading is being undertaken. To demonize them unless of course you paid via their services. Still they fail to address copying of a CD for personal use and infact tried to stifle that personal right. If they accomplish this large scale propaganda / political influence stratedgy I doubt anything indy or not part of the racketeering umbrella gets much attention. How many AOL users are there in America? How many of them will be limited to what the records lables want SOLD? Do you think they are going to give anything indy a chance to be SOLD?

The days of records, they liked to stick the best songs on the last track, where the RPM is the lowest, and it sounded alot worse due to a known groove carving temperature defect. Screw them.

I wont pay for any MP3, or an OGG file.

If they used FLAC, (5mb Per Minute Free Lossless Audio Codec) with no DRM, then I might just reconsider.

Last I heard the Napster brand was going to be used for a pressplay service. Not p2p based. I would guess theres been a mistake somewhere. The majors will just about tolerate a DRMed website for their music, they would never let it on p2p willingly.

The format will be WMA, because its the only format on the windows platform with effective DRM (providing you dont use DRMv2, which is broken).

i really need music

NiceGuy2003

The record label tried to use the small 24minute CD's. But, in true greedy fashion, they didn't give them a chance to succeed. It was about then that they started to kill the single. It's to the point today where if your single hasn't cracked the Top 40, there's NO CHANCE in HELL of finding it released as a single. Why do you think everyone turned to downloading? It was a real alternative way to acquire that one song WITHOUT shelling out $15-20 for the entire CD you might not even like.

I like your idea of a fee system, not per song. Per song charges suck.

Fuck paying for music, I aint paying for shit i'll continue to download 100's os songs until they catch me......LOL, let em sue me the checks in the mail

Oh, Rumrunner, if life were only that simple. Right,wrong,black,white. By the way, is that Navaho land you are standing on?

Get rid of britney spears and all the boybands. Meaning get rid of all the shitty stuff. Then I'll really pay for music.

mtekk, is that a Gnutella2 Logo on your avatar?

My mom wanted to buy a copy of the Wedding Singer OST...

She would have paid $20 for 8 songs that are old...

Good luck, RIAA! Cause your gonna need it.