i’m a member of a particular file sharing community. i won’t mention which one, but suffice to say it’s rather tasty.

anyway, i’ve been thinking a lot about that community and the distribution method there. the site is all torrents (of course) as they offer the fastest distribution possible. they also allow the site administrators to basically avoid a lot of legal trouble by hosting nothing on the site but the torrent files. this is a very common setup in the “piracy” world. i hate to use that word to describe the community, because i think, especially related to music, these sites are the future and someday these “pirates” may be looked back on as innovators and forward thinkers.

so if you’ve never been a member of one of these file sharing communities before, the way they tend to work is thus: how much you download is tracked. as you download the amount of data you’ve downloaded is stored in your profile on the site. your download total is then matched up with the amount of data you’ve uploaded to give a “ratio.” this ratio is then used to track your status on the site, with penalties for people that do not keep their ratio high enough (essentially not sharing what you’ve downloaded).

this tracking accomplishes a couple of things. first, it helps to keep things available for other users longer. it’s in the user’s best interest to keep something “seeded” to allow other users to download it as well (as this helps their ratio by uploading data). second, it helps to keep file transfer speeds up, as again it is best for the users to keep things open on their end. the more people you can potentially download from, the faster your download will be. that’s really the essence behind torrent technology in the first place. lastly, tracking a user’s ratio is good for the community as a whole. it promotes sharing and helps to keep the community growing, in regards to the amount of music available and shared.

so how can this model be applied to a “legitimate” music distribution source? i think that most people that are a part of these communities (and these communities do contain artists and bands as well as your average music fan) realize that what they are doing is taking something from an artist and not providing the compensation they deserve. the majority of these people i think are fed up with the price of music, they way they are treated by record labels, and a general overabundance of music that just kind of sucks. there are plenty of great bands out there, but finding them is almost impossible by going to the record store or listening to the radio anymore (don’t even get me started on mtv or vh1). most of that music is so tightly controlled by record labels that it’s hard to find things new and interesting.

the system in place already on these sites is pretty well designed. these sites have been through a few iterations now, and the community and policies used are well developed. i don’t think the system needs to change in the way it works, but i think that it can be adapted to a pay model for music distribution, which in the long run would benefit both music listeners and artists (and even to an extent record labels). here’s what i would suggest.

• the base fee for a site could be $5 - $10 per month. i think it’s already been proven that people are willing to pay for monthly services as long as those services provide what they need and are updated frequently. take a look at the popularity of MMOs or netflix and you’ll see that people are willing to pay monthly for entertainment.

• keep the ratios, and make them hold an incentive. what i think would work well in this regard would be a fee adjustment for uploading and keeping a “good ratio.” for example, as long as your ratio for a particular month is say, 1.00+, then you save a certain amount of money off the next month’s fee. if your ratio is in the range from 0.75-1.00, then you save still, but not as much as if you had a higher ratio. the same would go for uploading a quality rip or fulfilling a user request. you could save a certain amount of money for any requests filled, or new uploads that you provide.

• the record labels have to give up some control. that’s the biggest hurdle to any of the new age p2p type sharing communities or systems. the record labels would need to provide the servers to host the site, but they should not provide the content (yet…). they need to let users upload from their own collections. this is especially true in the formative stages of this kind of service. as cds and other physical media become less and less available, and all music is initially released digitally, the need for users to share their own collections will become less necessary. but until that time, record labels have to give up their physical control of the product and rather let their control come from the distribution.

• artists need to have a stake in it too. the sites themselves could be owned by record labels, but they should allow artists to receive compensation when their music is added. because the site tracks users, torrents, and all kinds of other data, it would be easy to track the amount of downloads an artist receives. this should allow for a good profit sharing amongst the parties involved. in fact, i would argue that the labels themselves should only make profit from ads. all download dividends should be given directly to the artist.

• file formats and quality should still be enforced. i think the best aspect of these communities now is their “snobbish” approach to digital music quality. i think this absolutely needs to stay the same. i think it is in the best interest of everyone involved to have the highest quality product available, as well as to only reward those users that conform to those quality standards. the policing should continue to be done by community members with assistance from some paid employees.

by moving these sites from the underground to the mainstream you gain acceptance from the public at large. you also open the community up for a much broader range of music and opinions. while many people might feel special because they are a member of these communities, i think that attitude might be the most damaging to something like this in the long run. as it is now, music is controlled by large corporations that really have no desire to promote or manage an artist properly. they only care about the bottom line. i think a system such as i’ve outlined above still allows them to maintain their bottom line (granted not to the tune of millions of dollars, but really who expects that to keep up?) as well as provide a method for distribution of any and all artists.

could you imagine if you could hook up to an online music repository that contained literally hundreds of thousands of releases via your xbox 360 or other home media center? that’s the potential for something like this, if only the recording industry would get off their asses and do something about it. because, i guarantee if they don’t, someone else will (and already have, but to the loss of the music industry).