In November, a startup called Mercora plans to launch a service that will attempt to answer that question. Challenging popular wisdom, Mercora Chief Executive Srivats Sampath, former CEO of McAfee.com, is betting that users will jump at the opportunity to trade news, song clips and information about each other’s buying and listening habits — while paying for copyright material.
“We want to build eBay for music,” said Sampath in an interview at the Digital Hollywood entertainment technology show in Los Angeles. “We want to build a trusted infrastructure where labels, artists and users come together.”
Mercora, a derivation of a Latin word meaning “to trade,” is designing a site that will allow users to voluntarily open up their hard drives to millions of users. If members give permission, other users can find out what they just bought and what they’re listening to at a given moment. Members can send each other clips from songs the labels want to promote, or even entire albums from up-and-coming bands that want their names known.
Sampath said he plans to price songs from big labels at 99 cents initially, on par with Apple Computer’s new iTunes store and BuyMusic.com’s recently launched service. But labels can opt to price the songs any way they want or even give them away for free.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60660,00.html
Related
- Broadcast your music legally with the new Mercora free!
- Mercora: An Overview of Legalized Music File Sharing
- YouTube Takes Down Comedy Central Clips Based on DMCA Claims
- Music sharing that’s free and legal
- Mercora
