Mashboxx, EMI ink license deal
Long-silent legal P2P service acquires license from second of the four major label giants and unveils more details; no word on launch date.
More than a year after it announced itself with a licensing deal with Sony BMG, legal peer-to-peer (P2P) service Mashboxx said today that it has inked a licensing deal with UK label giant EMI.
The deal gives Mashboxx the right to launch with all of EMI's catalog, which includes artists like Coldplay, Dem Franchize Boyz, Gorillaz, The Rolling Stones, Joss Stone, KT Tunstall, Keith Urban, and Robbie Williams.
When that launch will actually occur, however, is anybody's guess. The company has been silent on details of its service since January. Once launched, users who download the Mashboxx client software will be able to pay to download legal versions of copyrighted songs on existing P2P networks.
When Mashboxx announced its deal with Sony BMG in late June 2005, it looked to be the first of the major P2P services to go legit. It made that announcement in the immediate aftermath of the landmark US Supreme Court decision that found that P2P services could be held liable for copyright violations committed on their networks. Facing the legal wrath of the precedent-wielding Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), major P2P services faced a daunting choice of closing up shop, trying to go legit, or defending themselves in court.
Mashboxx is headed by Wayne Rosso, the former top exec at Grokster, the P2P service that was one of the two named defendants in the Supreme Court case. Grokster has since settled its case with the Recording Industry Association of America for $50 million and agreed to go legit as well.
But despite the attention it garnered in the days after the Supreme Court decision as the potentially the first P2P service to tame itself and go legit with the music industry's support, much of that buzz has stalled in the past year.
Mashboxx provided no details today about its expected launch date, and the service remains in an invitation-only beta-testing stage. With the addition of EMI, the service is expected to broaden the beta to a public test soon.
"Legal peer-to-peer services which offer consumers a great user experience and which compensate creators appropriately are good for music fans, good for artists, and good for the digital music market as a whole," EMI exec David Munns said in a statement. "When it rolls out, Mashboxx will be a no-obligation way for fans to really immerse themselves in discovering music, turning their friends on to what they like and getting excited about artists and music they've not yet heard. It has the potential to be a very good revenue stream for those who make their living from creating and investing in music."
The EMI deal gives Mashboxx access to one-half of the major label music catalog. EMI said it was allowing Snocap, the infrastructure and cash clearinghouse of sorts founded by original Napster creator Shawn Fanning, to "fingerprint" its entire digital catalog. Fingerprinting will allow Snocap and Mashboxx to monitor downloads and the usage restrictions applied to them.
Those restrictions limit what a user can do with a song once it is purchased and downloaded. Mashboxx will give users a "try before you buy" to listen to a full-length song up to five times at no charge before being prompted to buy the track.
Once bought and downloaded, Mashboxx songs can be burned onto a CD up to seven times, played on five PCs and transferred to Windows Media-compatible portable audio players (Creative, Samsung, SanDisk, and so on, but no iPod) an unlimited number of times.
