DJ Shadow – first artist to get paid by BitTorrent

While BitTorrent usually isn’t synonymous with legitimate music downloads, it looks like things are about to change. According to reports online, BitTorrent is now being used to distribute original music starting with a turntablist known as DJ Shadow. Every time someone downloads a free torrent of his tracks and installs the bundled software, he and the developer of the software will earn some revenue.

Details of the revenue sharing weren’t released, but this legitimate way of distributing music could be the first of many deals BitTorrent makes with artists in the music industry. It wasn’t mentioned if users can delete the apps after installing them to keep the free music, but this minor inconvenience would probably deter quite a lot of people. After all, not many people trust apps that come bundled with torrents.

The apps will differ from region to region, but bundled software could be something useful like RealPlayer (a media player) which can be used to listen to the music itself. Sounds like a pretty cool idea for people who want to download music without paying and not go against the law at the same time, but I have a feeling that users will be holding out for an app-less version of the torrent instead. What do you think? Readers keen on checking out DJ Shadow’s Hidden Transmissions from the MPC Era (1992-1996) can head here to download the torrent.

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: bittorrent