Raise a Small Fortune By Selling Your Unwanted MP3s
Written by enigmax on December 10, 2008In these credit-crunching times, many people are trying to raise extra money. Some people clear out the garage and have a sale, while others drop their unwanted items on eBay. If your purchases are digital in nature, don’t worry. A new site has appeared where you can sell your unwanted MP3s.
Times are tough right now. Unemployment is rising, many businesses are in serious trouble and it looks like Christmas spending will leave little for retailers to be cheerful about either.
With credit becoming more difficult to acquire and future potential for funds looking less than healthy, many people are looking for second and third jobs. Those that have no time may consider selling items in order to raise extra funds, but for those whose unwanted items are digital rather than physical, options have been limited - until now. Enter Bopaboo.
That’s right. Got a few unwanted MP3’s cluttering your hard drive? Accidentally bought the same track, two, three, four times or received a duplicate song as a gift? Don’t worry! Offload your unwanted MP3s at Bopaboo and delight in all the extra cash and hard drive space you just created. It’s a win-win-win situation. So how does it work?
Currently in private-beta to United States-based users, Bopaboo seems easy to use. According to the site, after registering the user is given his very own MP3 store. Here he simply uploads his unwanted MP3s (no DRM allowed) and selects the sales price. The user can upload as many MP3s as he likes, there is no limit. Bopaboo handles the order taking and payment processing and as soon as a buyer buys an MP3, the site transfers the file to the customer and the money to the seller.
Of course, Bopaboo has to make its money, and it does so by taking a percentage of the sales price. Initially, money is placed in the user’s ‘bopaBank’ but it is available for withdrawal or further purchases on Bopaboo.
Potential buyers can search in all the usual ways, with a feedback and seller rating system to help with choosing a supplier. Tracks can be purchased for as little as $0.25 each and major credit cards are accepted.
Bopaboo state that their service is completely legal with their tagline - “Stop illegally sharing and start legally selling!” In their FAQ they further state that “Unlike, peer-to-peer file networks - bopaboo never creates duplicates of your music.” We contacted Bopaboo and asked for more information but they haven’t responded so far.
So in the meantime, I’m off to see how much space I can clear on a couple of 500gig hard drives - these MP3s are simply gathering dust and this Bopaboo opportunity is too good to miss. Decisions, decisions……
Previously: FrostWire P2P Client Starts Artist Promotion
Next: Pirate Bay Censorship Case Not Over Yet
95 Responses
What’s stopping people downloading of LimeWire, making some adjustments then reselling it?
So whats stopping people from just downloading the music for free and then selling them on Bopaboo.
Sorry Adrian. I guess we both posted at the same time. I must have been reading your mind or vise versa.
Well 1 and 2, I think that’s the point of this article (and maybe even this service), it puts “selling” digital music in a different perspective.
Exactly, this concept would never work. Don’t ever trust people’s morale :P
this is a joke right? haha what a retarded concept
It will be full of different quality rips and transcodes
May I say that this is not going to work? MP3s are not a commodity like CDs (secondspin, etc) that can be exchanged. This would be like printing your own money. If the site is not lawsuited out of existence, and they can actually find a critical mass of people who’ll use it (instead of get free MP3s from torrents), then it means selling something that can be created and distributed without limit. How that would work, economically, is unclear, but at best it would create a glut of MP3s for sale and drive prices down to zero (the torrent “price”) because of the glut. The only way this would work is if the MP3s were somehow unique and unavailable elsewhere. This, of course, is doomed because as soon as one person buys a unique MP3, it’s on a torrent someplace.
This is surely a piss-take.
actually, I could see you making money with this, if it becomes popular its alot easier to find music on a website for people that dont know any better, and then the very next thing that would happen is it would get sued into oblivon.
this has to be a joke..seriously? this is just plain stupid.
Seems like RIAA lawyer bait to me.
Commercial Piracy
hahaha if this isnt a joke someone should tell the 12 year olds working on this site to get back to their homework.
This is simply the stupidest business model I’ve ever heard of. Thanks!
haha, maybe it’s worth a try… after all, there are people who have bought snow on ebay, right?
…a nice way to make some money…
just wait till you have enough users, then sue them (or thread to sue) because noone will be able to verify he/she has legally obtained the music.
on the other hand, if controlled by the mpaa itself: is there a better way to identify these non-drm mp3-lovers as to make them entering their personal data themselves when creatung an account? You even get their bank-account numbers for free…
What is this sort of article doing here anyway?..
This whole business is based on attempting to apply the physical model (i.e. when you sell an item you no longer possess that item yourself) to the digital model (when you sell an item, you can keep the original copy).
It relies on the honesty of users to manually delete their own copies of the files after uploading, and why would someone do that when they can keep the MP3 and make money from it too?
If the RIAA’s laywers aren’t already working on this, you can bet they soon will be.
bopaboo never creates duplicates of your music
So, are they lying or do they just have a very poor grasp of how the internet works?
so it’s basically like a one click hoster only i get direct money instead of RS points?
suuuure i got some unwanted mp3’s *copypasting10GBmusicfolder*
billboard.biz - Each used MP3 can only be sold once by any one user. After a user sells a track, the system then bars that user from selling that same track again. And the proceeds from sold tracks can then only be used as credits to buy new music from the site. The credits can’t be used to buy other used MP3s.
“I’ll be Rich, Rich I tells ya”
$$$$$$
I’ll never have to work again
other than copy and paste the top 30 tracks on Itunes up to this site, I might hire me a monkey to do that for me.
Its a perfect example how sic the minds of business people are, they are not able to understand the difference between a material product and a digital one.
To lure sharing type “criminals” into selling pirated copyright work, which IS severely punishable by law, while sharing isn’t really, unless your willing to twist the laws in existence the way the RIAA and consorts love to do.
The requirement that the music sold is non-DRM sounds equaly fishy.
500 Copies of the song One from Metallica, anyone wana buy?
(yeah, I couldn’t botter copy/pasting more then that …)
(Oh, I just found out that if I select these 500 copies and copy/paste them another 500 times I’ve got 250000 copies.)
(Oooh, It works with all 4000 of my songs)
(So thats 4000*250000*0,25 = 250.000.000$!!!!)
(Oooh I can even select all 4000*250000 songs again and copy/paste them another 500 times!)
Sheesh, 125 Billion worth of music in 10 minutes, if I can bother to do this another hour, I can simply BUY Sony/BMG, Virgin, Fox, Disney, Universal and all those other old farts!
I think the business model for this site simply transfers the licensing problem to the individual that is actually uploading the MP3s. The license agreement when joining the site probably states that the uploader is responsible for having a valid license.
BopaBoo probably just takes fees for it’s service (i.e. offering a web platform, just like ebay), so they don’t really care about whether the uploader actually has a license.
The thing that is more interesting than the uploader having the correct license is what happens to the downloader. In most countries selling “stolen” goods is impossible, meaning if you sell something that didn’t belong to you in the first place, the buyer will not gain property rights on that particular item and even lose his money.
IIRC the Netherlands is one of the few countries where the buyer actually gains property rights if he’s buying stolen goods without him knowing… But what about the US?
The only thing is… As you are selling MP3s on this platform this will make the punishable for commercial copyright infringement I guess.
This sound like a strange site with lots of problems waiting around the corner.
“Currently in private-beta to United States-based users”
Bring the retards.
“bopaboo never creates duplicates of your music”
Of course, every transfer stage requires duplicates. That is how transfer works.
I do see the possibility of “selling” a lot of the music for free - if offering it for free is an option.
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
is this not commercial piracy? sounds like a trap to me
Very “nice” business model:
They try to make money by offering the service to facilitate the trading (or more likely “trafficking”? of pirated material while not committing copyright infringement themselfes (that is left to the uploaders and suppliers who copy, upload and sell their (probably illegaly manifolded) material.
In short: They try to make money from (mostly) illegal copying hoping that their “customers” will take the blame and the penalty (if they get catched and prosecuted).
If there is ever any punishable act like “facilitating copyright infringement” that TPB has been accused of, than it’s this infamous “business” scheme of (like I would like to call it) boopaPOO.
Of cause they will claim that they trust and oblige their customers to only trade that single file they legally bought before somewhere else, and have no means to determine the legal status of the uploaded files.
But greed obviously will generate enough “smart” customers who will try to sell their mp3s over and over again …. commting commercial copyright infringement … and maybe some dumb fucktards who will actually prefer to pay for illegal material and unjustly fill some scammers pockets over the legally punishable necessety to “seed back” in p2p-nets.
I acctually hope that the mafiaa and riaa will hesitate no moment to sue and prosecute these attempts to commercially benefit from copyright infringement.
Any pirating is illegal copying. But filesharers just copy and shares without commercial gains in mind for themselves exept undermining a data monopoly that mafiaa and alike try to enforcee to generate obcene revenues.
But these “boopapoo” businessmodel actually tries to make money by selling (and offerring the trading platform for) illegal copied material on a commercial scale. This is just a digital analog to the fucktards that SELL botleg copies at the flea market / car boot sale.
Thats disgusting to any “real” pirate.
And boopaPOO acts as the pimp that sells the market stand - hoping that the whores will get punished while the pimp gets the money.
That is highly disgusting!!!
There is already something that sells valueless products. It’s called Itunes.
haha, maybe it’s worth a try… after all, there are people who have bought snow on ebay, right?
http://www.torrenthub.org - Mininova Cloned (for when its slow or down AGAIN!)
I agree with all the people who say this is a stupid idea.
I have no problem downloading or sharing music as I believe non-commercial downloading of mp3s are fine and the RIAA should shove it long and hard.
But once you put any type of value to this, it makes it a whole new ballpark for the RIAA lawyers.
Ummm… as far as misleading titles go, this rates pretty darn high. ‘Selling’ implies financial gain. No one will ever see a single physical penny for any music they upload. ‘Trading’ your mp3 for site credits is a more honest (but, obviously less eye catching) headline.
This is just pay to leech 1 to 1 filesharing with a middleman taking a cut.
Credid cruch is becouse of DMCA
@22: So they prevent you from selling the same track multiple times. However, I don’t see anything stopping someomne from uploading the same track several times and claiming it’s different tracks. Or what if someone has 3 copies and therefore 3 licenses of the exact same song?
Yeah, this business model was very poorly thought out. As said above, the only useful purpose for this is to sucker people into buying potentially sub-quality tracks and/or a very deadly trap by the RIAA.
this is a great honeypot!
My god!
WHOIS, follow the trace… hmmmm… part of:
168.215.71.210 Time/Warner Telecom
And, a DoS will result in a brute force attack, that comes from:
38.118.213.25, Aspen Anti-P2P
Nice try…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_(computing)
Decisions, decisions…
Ohh, go on then; I’ll grab one of those Veyrons off ya. Thanks!
Apparently this site is run by Amazon.NeoTrace Trace Version 3.25 Results
Target: http://www.bopaboo.com
Date: 12/10/2008 (Wednesday), 12:01:55 PM
Nodes: 14
Node Data
Node Net Reg IP Address Location Node Name
1 - - 63.26.36.151 Omaha evilbox
2 1 - 63.3.13.2 41.506N, 88.650W
3 1 - 63.3.45.65 Chicago
4 2 1 152.63.2.173 Chicago 0.so-0-2-0.hr1.chi4.alter.net
5 2 1 152.63.69.230 Chicago 0.so-5-0-0.xt1.chi4.alter.net
6 2 1 152.63.70.29 Chicago 0.so-6-1-0.xt1.chi2.alter.net
7 2 1 152.63.71.98 Chicago 0.so-6-0-0.br6.chi2.alter.net
8 3 2 129.250.9.25 Chicago p16-1-2-3.r20.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
9 3 2 129.250.5.5 New York p64-0-0-0.r21.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
10 3 2 129.250.2.9 39.044N, 77.489W as-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
11 3 2 129.250.2.181 39.044N, 77.489W po-2.r04.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
12 4 2 168.143.228.38 39.044N, 77.489W te-8-4.r05.asbnva01.us.ce.gin.ntt.net
13 5 - 72.21.197.16 Seattle
14 6 3 75.101.131.1 Seattle ec2-75-101-131-1.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Packet Data
Node High Low Avg Tot Lost
1 0 0 0 1 0
2 3132 3132 3132 1 0
3 3405 3405 3405 2 1
4 2448 2448 2448 1 0
5 590 590 590 1 0
6 2444 2444 2444 1 0
7 1660 1660 1660 1 0
8 297 297 297 1 0
9 509 509 509 1 0
10 357 357 357 1 0
11 391 391 391 1 0
12 450 450 450 1 0
13 365 365 365 1 0
14 —- —- —- 2 2
Network Data
Network id#: 1
OrgName: UUNET Technologies, Inc.
OrgID: UUDA
Address: 22001 Loudoun County Parkway
City: Ashburn
StateProv: VA
PostalCode: 20147
Country: US
Network id#: 2
OrgName: MCI Communications Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business
OrgID: MCICS
Address: 22001 Loudoun County Pkwy
City: Ashburn
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OrgName: NTT America, Inc.
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Address: 8005 South Chester Street
Address: Suite 200
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StateProv: CO
PostalCode: 80112
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Network id#: 4
OrgName: NTT America, Inc.
OrgID: NTTAM-1
Address: 8005 South Chester Street
Address: Suite 200
City: Centennial
StateProv: CO
PostalCode: 80112
Country: US
Network id#: 5
OrgName: Amazon.com, Inc.
OrgID: AMAZON-4
Address: 605 5th Ave S
City: SEATTLE
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98104
Country: US
Network id#: 6
OrgName: Amazon.com, Inc.
OrgID: AMAZO-4
Address: Amazon Web Services, Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
Address: 1200 12th Avenue South
City: Seattle
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98144
Country: US
Registrant Data
Registrant id#: 1
See Registrant Pane for registrant contact information.
Registrant id#: 2
Registrant:
NTT Communications Corporation
1-1-6, Uchisaiwai-cho
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8019
JP
Registrant id#: 3
See Registrant Pane for registrant contact information.
_____
NeoTrace Copyright ©1997-2001 NeoWorx Inc
Sounds like a good way for a website to get a lot of peoples personal details in a very short space of time…
love the zonda, you can race one in Race Driver Grid
If the resale value of digital music is zero, I’m sure as hell not gonna purchase any of it from amazon & co in the first place.
PLS Click: http://www.iHateCandy.de.gp/
April was 8 months ago, the joke’s a bit late (or early).
I’m ready to upload my 1 TB Mp3`s , wow so much money !! no i dont wanan sell ma music haha !
Is there a Darwin award for business models?
This sounds like a sure winner for such an award to me…
I’ve got 170GB.
Do they really want it all?
I could mail them a harddrive with the content…
I actually want to be able to use my machine sometime this month. . .
looks like a good idea to me, i’m gunna try and upload of couple of tunes. never no….
I wanna have what this guy was smokin’.
Than maybe i can put a tax on breathing. OMG i’ll be rich!!!
theyre setting on workers aswell, i might apply for a job and get inside. maybe i will never visit that site again.
i cant believe i thought i was the first one to think of a easy way to scam this bizzare idea. it wud feed my crack addiction with money to spare.
You’re all retarded, it’s great idea!
If record labels claim digital music is like property, copying it is a crime right? You can buy digital music from iTunes righ? you buy it, it yours, why shouldn’t you be alowed to sell it?
Now either MPAA/RIAA will have to admit that it’s not property - and copying it isn’t a crime - becouse digital music doesn’t have any value itself, or if it have a value (like they litigation department claims) then you can sell it right?
It should be great news for all of us if this thing starts to work :)
this is all very well, but do you honestly think there are people (who dare to venture outside of itunes) out there who want to BUY mp3s?
Unless they sell lossless FLAC copies of CDs and songs, which people might buy instead of the lossy music you can download or buy off iTunes, this service is pointless.
I agree with 54..
i wouldnt use it but it makes sense.. if you bought it.. you should be able to sell it since its yours.
@54 The problem is you do not buy anything from Apples iTunes store…
You get a license for a song or album and this license can very well state that you are not allowed to transfer it to someone else.
Much the same goes for any software you buy. You own nothing… You are granted a license.
This didn’t look stupid it at all.
Most people here fail to see how clever this is.
Stop thinking about making money etc.
This is to change peoples opinion about digital media.
Interesting!
I found the line “If you are curious about the people behind bopaboo, you are just going to have to patient - but it just may surprise you!” (http://blog.bopaboo.com/2008/05/welcome-to-bopaboo/) extra suspicious… as if the rest of it wasnt suspicious enough already :p
Also, the fact that their domain name is owned by ‘DomainsByProxy.com’ is a bit odd - thats a company whos job is to hide the real owner of a domain… seems a bit strange to go to the extra expense of something like that if they didnt have something to hide :p
either lawsuit bait or most likely another site running out of a third world country and declaring itself legal
“Currently in private-beta to United States-based users” yes home of the millennium act fuuuuuuuuq that
Too good to be true.
Clever!
The next time I cannot find a rare album on torrent sites, if you’re the one selling it on this site then you might have my 3$ instead of iTunes having my 10$.
It’s a trap!
that is quite possibbly the most stupid business concept I’ve seen all year.
I give them less than a week before the RIAA pops a little letter through their door.
Is it April 1st already?
Pure bullocks. This would never work.
Just a show of hands here, who remembers MiiVii?
@69: Yes, for all intents and purposes, this is no different from MiiVi.
And there are too many red flags to say otherwise, the biggest IMO being that they are hiding their WHOIS data by using Domains By Proxy.
The question that comes to mind is, can it actually be legal to purchase mp3:s through this site? With no real way of telling if the seller actually owns a licence, can this site legally provide you with one when you purchase an album? I have to say TF should have researched this better, and maybe have had a proper interview with the creator of the site before advertising it like this…
I don’t think anyone in their right mind will buy stuff here, until they can provide proof that it will be a legal download.
Is this Media Defender again fucking with people?
read the article, they asked for a comment and didnt get one.
Here’s an interview with the CEO of the site on CNET:
———————
Okay, here’s the juice from Bopaboo CEO Alex Meshkin, a 28-year-old who didn’t go to college, doesn’t know programming but once ran Toyota’s Nascar team. Yes, Nascar team. He added that Bopaboo is a Washington D.C.-based company founded a year ago.
I put the most important question to him first.
Q: Why don’t you think the recording industry is going to sue you into oblivion?
Meshkin: Obviously, MP3s are very easy to duplicate…It’s very difficult to tell the difference between a so-called new copy and a so-called old copy…I can buy a CD and I can rip it and that behavior has basically been endorsed by the music industry. I can resell that CD on Amazon. The industry doesn’t have a way to monetize physical goods being traded on the secondary market. The first-sale doctrine protects that right. In the physical world consumers have the right to resell their property and copyright owners can’t do anything about that.”
Okay, but there’s no way that the four largest music labels are going to sit back and let you enable people to sell multiple copies of the same song. Isn’t that what people will be able to do using your digital marketplace?
Meshkin: We have the technology in place to prevent you from selling a song more than one time…We take a digital fingerprint through every upload that prevents a user from uploading to our service a track more than one time. Actually we’ve come up with an algorithm, which is beyond what even (digital filtering company) Gracenote does with song identification.
———————
From: http://news.cnet.com/8300-1023_3-93.html?categoryId=9969739
The digital fingerprint comment is, at best, a trick to cover their asses. I’m still more for the “its bait and a trap aka a honeypot”
You can not, possibly EVER, create a true unique and identifyable digital fingerprint for a file that can be altered in a gazillion ways without having the sound that comes out of the MP3 or other audio file changing.
Most of these fingerprinting schemes are defeated simply by overlaying the song with a ultra low or ultra high frequency (aka beyond human hearing) sine.
@72 Exactly, wait for the comment!! Otherwise your just advertising illegal download to your users…
Intresting CNET article, but the guy seems to be avoiding the question. They only (try to) stop each user from uploading the same file twice. There’s probably millions of tracks I can upload…
These reactions are hilarious :)
Of course this is bait. But it’s not about business models, but scaring the shit out of corporate structure by elevating piracy to unfathomable heights. It’s just the perspective that matters here.
Well done to no54! I cant believe it took so long for someone to see it.
brilliant idea. Is it property or not?? Can u sell it or not?
There are gonna be some Puzzled people sat in Record company offices now.
F**kin LOL…
:-) :-) :-)
Selling mp3’s is quite cheeky. I wouldn’t do it, but it doesn’t mean I don’t support the organisation.
1:Download free item.
2. Sell it.
3. CP:0
4: profit %=sp-cp/cp *100
5. cp =0
6.profit %=infinity (or not defined)
I love globalization .
Hahaha, it is so funny to see the big content providers fall over each other to tell the world how this is hurting them and that it should be outlawed.
They pushed everybody to treat digital goods as tangible goods (which is insane), and when someone other than themselves finds a way to make money on it, they bitch and whine. They have this, and so much more coming.
This company is in Washington, D.C.?
For those who don’t know, you might find it curious that the RIAA is also headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Hmmm……….
It’s a trap!
i think it’s just a try to get vile stores like i-tunes down :)
Odds are that it’s a very alluring ruse. But, in the unlikely event that it is legit, we can all quit our day jobs.
The ONLY way this COULD work is for there to be DRM on the file you’re selling. Shit dood, I’d sooner bin for bottles and cans than get all lathered about selling my music.
It goes to show how stupid selling mp3s in the first place is (iTunes etc.). Shit, it was bits of whatever when you bought it the first time. Still is… Biggity Whoops!
I think the people that are accusing TF of not reviewing this site and everything properly fail to see that this is most obviously a sarcastic/satire article.
This line really gave it away (as if it wasn’t obvious before).
“So in the meantime, I’m off to see how much space I can clear on a couple of 500gig hard drives - these MP3s are simply gathering dust and this Bopaboo opportunity is too good to miss.”
Fail.
If folks are already getting fined/sued for just having mp3’s
Then why not try to make a Lil scratch?
Lol I wonder how much money you could make selling pirated music if you had 2million+ songs :D LMFAO race you to 100million dollars jokes :D Seriously what stops someone doing it though :?
Am I wrong? But don’t most places that sell legal mp3’s sell them as non-transferable. I really thing i-tunes for example does. So in short this Idea to sell your used mp3 is bunk; plus who says the seller would delete what they are selling and keep them from selling it over and over.
Clearly this is run by the riaa
Nice try to lure us into a honeypot
LOSERS!
hahahaahahahaahahahhhaahaaha
At least someone is trying to get people to pay for music in innovative ways - if completely ineffective. Here’s an interesting related article.
Selling air to the ignorant. Brilliant.
my comment is short cos i have laughed so hard i’ve coughed up a lung n need to see a doctor….
no doubt there will be a catch as in some poor sap will fall for it hook, line & sinker!
now, to the hospital i go ha ha ha ha ha etc
merry crimbo everyone
This is byfar the most dodgey site no the fucking net you fucking daftys i am studying law at Newcastle and will do everything in my power to have sites like this closed down there is nothing legal about this shit c u in court good bye 4 now
I have 500 copies of everything for sale. hurry up and buy from me before I run out!!!
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