DJ Shadow will make revenue out of song downloads from BitTorrent

Piracy has been one thing the music and movie industry has always complained about because they lose out on money when people download music for free.

BitTorrent Inc. has been partnering with indie musicians and filmmakers to distribute bundles of their content on the popular uTorrent client. Recently though, DJ Shadow launched a cooperation with BitTorrent that gets him some revenue every time someone downloads a free torrent of his tracks, as long as the downloader also allows some software that come bundled in the torrent.

BitTorrent will be offering a bundle of three MP3s from DJ Shadow’s forthcoming archival project, Hidden Transmissions from the MPC Era (1992-1996). The package will also contain digital artwork, archival footage from the MPC Era and some software that will generate revenue for the artist as well as BitTorrent. The software included in the bundle was Real Player the last time I checked.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

BitTorrent is teaming up with DJ Shadow

Matt Manson, BitTorrent’s executive director of marketing, didn’t want to discuss the details of the revenue-sharing agreement and said that it was an experiment and would be tweaked depending on how it goes. DJ Shadow’s manager Michael Fiebach told Gigaom, “It’s definitely a fair deal.” Michael Fiebach works for Fame House, which has partnered with BitTorrent in the past.

“Because the offer will be in every torrent shared, we’re leveraging the BitTorrent ecosystem in a new way,” Mason said to TechCrunch. “The more people that share this Bundle, the greater the chances the artist will make money, directly from the BitTorrent Bundle. That’s new, and it’s a model we’re going to keep developing here.”

Eric Klinker, CEO of BitTorrent recently said on the BitTorrent blog, “We believe we can make digital distribution even more viable for creators and fans. So, beginning now, we’ll be testing new ways to drive profitability for creators and publishers, while delivering even more meaningful media experiences for users.”

The blog goes on, “It’s a simple idea, but the ramifications for consumers and creators are huge. Every time a user downloads the free software offer packaged with the DJ Shadow Bundle, our media partners will pay BitTorrent for delivering them a new user.” This isn’t the first time BitTorrent is promoting an artist. “We’ve been doing promotions and advertising around content since 2008. But it’s time to make that experience better. The DJ Shadow Bundle is the first of a number of new advertising experiments we’ll be testing in-client, on our websites and other media properties in the next few months.”