Wierd

[andrewducker]

There's recently been a little fanfare about PlayLouder, an ISP which allows you to legally share music, then sees how much music is shared and pays some of your monthly subscription to the rights owners.

It seems to work by redirecting P2P stuff so that it only works internally, and then scanning the packets to learn what you're sharing.

So far as I can make out, the functionality is the same as a regular ADSL connection + Napster's subscription model.  Except that they aren't actually making the music available themselves, just allowing you to share your own, which means you'll be really stuck to actually find anything even slightly obscure.  They haven't made it clear whether there's any DRM on the music either, which would just make it a lose, lose situation all round.

I can't see any positive side to this _at all_.  Anyone care to illuminate me?

Comments

[drplokta]

The article on BoingBoing, which resulted from direct conversations with PlayLouder's senior people, is explicit that PlayLouder customers can download music from anywhere, not just their own network, and thay can share music as they do at present. The only intervention that PlayLouder make is to filter Sony tracks out so that those tracks, and only those tracks, can't leave the PlayLouder network. PlayLouder's own website is less clear on these issues. But assuming BoingBoing has got it right, then the situation is as I stated.

[andrewducker]

Well that makes a _lot_ more sense.

_If_ the BoingBoing article is correct and the website isn't, it sounds like a fantastic idea (and the best way of sorting the music sharing 'problem').

I am, however, going to wait and see whether the actual service works that well. I'm a tad nervous about how well it's going to work until a fair number of people are signed up, but we'll see. If they could get Telewest signed up, I'd be rather happy...