Media Defender to Spam P2P Networks With 16,000,000 Tracks from One Artist
Written by enigmax on July 08, 2007Spam comes in many shapes and forms and today we have news that anti-piracy company Media Defender has hooked up with telecoms company Sprint and Atlantic Records to give away 16 million free tracks on P2P networks. However, don’t get too excited, its 16 million tracks from one artist.
It’s being reported that Telecoms company Sprint has signed on the dotted line to form a partnership between themselves, Atlantic Records and Media Defender’s ArtistDirect.
The partnership is all about advertising. Sprint has bought the rights to have their name and logo embedded into tracks from the Atlantic Records hip-hop artist Plies.
It appears that Atlantic will supply Media Defender with a small number of Plies tracks, which will then be embedded with the Sprint logo which will appear on PC screens and digital devices playing the tracks. In return for a reported six-figure investment shared between the anti-piracy outfit, Atlantic Records and Plies, Media Defender will then flood P2P networks with the tracks over a 3 month period. Previously, Media Defender worked with Suretone Records to spam P2P networks with partial songs and videos in an attempt to generate traffic to their client’s website.
ArtistDirect’s CEO Jon Diamond said the project has a three-pronged approach of generating advertising revenue for record labels, linking brands to a particular artist to reach a certain demographic and in the process, limiting piracy.
However, most file-sharers want a plain MP3 track with nothing added and are unlikely to want tracks which cause advertising pop-ups or similar on their PC. As ‘vanilla’ MP3’s of tracks from the same artist will be widely available on the same P2P networks, it’s likely that file-sharers will be drawn towards those downloads instead of the ‘infected’ versions offered by Media Defender. So, this strategy will most likely NOT limit piracy.
Besides setting up fake BitTorrent trackers and fake video download sites, Media Defender is currently in talks with other artists and is likely to announce similar partnerships shortly.
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20 Responses
Why on earth would they think that would limit piracy?
I doubt anyone will even download it, not when its infacted with adverts.
what makes you think they’re trying to limit piracy in the first place? It sounds like they’re just trying to make money. And how would people know whether it had adverts on it or not until after they downloaded it?
Sean: by not being total morons and not downloading any .exe files when they can get the song as MP3? You see, it’s kind of hard to infect MP3 files with anything other than, well, sound…
@Sean:
“And how would people know whether it had adverts on it or not until after they downloaded it?”
Err, maybe be reading something called “comment”? Last time I had a look, every torrentsite (holds true for some EDK sites too) featured something like that, where users could drop some lines about the content linked and quality thereof.
LOL@Sprint,MDnAtlantic…. flood the p2p networks with all your artists material sure fix to file sharing, he wait is the exactly what file sharing is? :D
@peter:
correct me, if i am wrong but as far as i know, it is possible to embed cover art into a mp3-file (via non-conform id-tag).
So, they’re uploading single songs to P2P networks. Does anyone actually use bit torrent to download single songs? Hell, the last time I downloaded a single track was when I was still using Kazaa on my dial-up some 7 years ago. Morons.
Spam is spam. If they can arrest people from sending spam by email they should also arrest these people for spamming P2P networks.
@peter
the other guy is right, it doesn’t have to be a .exe to embed an album cover or anything else into an mp3
@Noby
no every torrent site does not allow for comments, go and look at isohunt or mininova, 2 of the most popular torrent sites, and also, p2p doesn’t just mean torrent, programs like limewire and ares would also probably be flooded, I don’t know about you, but I get most of my singles from other p2p networks that aren’t bittorrent
@Sean (and the rest of the “embedded album cover” dipshits).
All 177k tracks on my computer have embedded album art, and not 1 of them pops up on my screen when I play it.
In order to see the album art I need to actually open the file in an application that is aware of that art.
And if I don’t like the art, I can change it or completely remove it.
They must be planning to use exe files, as that would be the only way to pop up an advertisement when the track is played.
Also, they plan to release 16 million tracks, I am assume since no artist in history has made 16 million songs, that this is 16 millions of the same song or songs. Ask yourself something, how exactly do they plan to only release 16 million?
Once its released thats its, there is no turning back, that is what their whole bitch fest is about, you release a track and millions of people have it. They have no control over who downloads it.
Jesus people, use your fucking brains.
It obviously going to be loaded with spyware.
@Joe
first off, calm down with the name calling, then second, go and READ the actual ny post article, there is NOT going to be random ass adverts popping up, it’s (presumably) going to be where the album cover art goes, as the article explains: “Once embedded, the Sprint logo will be attached to the files forever and will appear alongside Plies’ name and the song title on the screen of a desktop computer, iPod, cellphone or any other digital music player.”
I say presumably because the only way for it to show up on an ipod or cell phone would for it to be in the album art
i.e., it will NOT have to be a .exe file.
therefore, you sir can kindly get off my nuts, thanks
@Sean:
Look closer! Mininova offers comments:
http://www.mininova.org/com/614774
Isohunt doesn’t, I agree on that. Therefore I usually snatch my torrents on sites allowing comments. I don’t use “unmoderated” networks exactly for this reason, no comments. But users of Limewire etc. might get the fake files, right. In that case the shouldn’t complain, there are plenty alternatives to avoid these fakes.
As Sean said, ads don’t have to actually pop up. If you have a software mp3-player “that is aware of that art” it will display cover art. Replace cover art with ad and… what happens? People see the ad.
@Joe
Thanks for the dipshit.
moo, who doesn’t care about .exe’s but would not like to see commercial abuse of the album-art-tag, because that would affect more than one os. (ergo: using tags would be much more intelligent, reaching some more people. and: does an ipod open .exe-files? i doubt that.)
[brain off]
@Noby
16 MILLION files are pretty much unavoidable, and like i said, most people i know wouldnt bother using bittorrent to download singles, especially when you rarely find many singles floating around out there (generally), and okay mininova offers comments, i was wrong, but we’d be kidding ourselves if one of us never went to isohunt to download something
besides, whats the big deal exactly? i mean i dont listen to plies personally but ive got friends who do and i doubt theyd be discouraged by having a sprint logo where the album cover should be. id understand if they were putting something to track the files on people’s computers, then id be pissed off but theyre not doing that it seems. this is the smartest thing any record label has done of late and embraced p2p rather than trying to shutting it down. they make the money they’re supposedly “losing” and some people get some free files
Not only was it a waste of their time, but it also gives us awareness of what artist NOT to download.
who is running this friggin company, their ideas are definitely of the “shoot from the hip” type and not well thought out at all.
I’ll take the devil’s advocate position and praise them for moving in the right direction — one that recognizes that people want free music (the whole song), and that something different than the CD jewel-case has to be tried.
This is a little bit of progress — if we’re not willing to give it a sniff and send them a few constructive comments about it, then what incentive to they have to keep making more progress?
@the5cardstud
good point.
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