Think Hotline of the mid-90s or Napster, but legal. And you get paid, too.
That’s the idea behind Peer Impact, a legal peer-to-peer music sharing service that’s quietly making waves in the industry. The concept is simple: Put your legally-owned music online to share with others, someone buys it, the music label gets a cut, you get a cut. The algorithm behind the service matches you with others who share similar characteristics (network type, location, connection speed). Over time you build a reputation and ratings, much like eBay.
Based here in Saratoga Springs, Peer Impact first came on my radar a couple months ago when I had lunch with one of the guys working on the product (part of a local, informal gathering of a few of us techies). The product seems to have a lot of promise and already has deals with all four major record labels.
Why pay 99 cents at iTunes and get only a song in return when you could pay 99 cents at Peer Impact and get a song and some revenue in return? Seems like a no-brainer to me, so I signed up for the beta today. Who knew that that old Color Me Badd CD I’ve held onto all these years had the potential to make me some recurring income, without having to part with it?
