Peer-to-Peer Executives Reflect on the Relevance of Their Industry

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 4, 2006 - 2:23pm.

From Digital Music Forum West 2006: Amanda Marks, EVP of Universal Music’s eLabs, set off an alarm among the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) executives in attendance this morning with her suggestion that P2P has become irrelevant. Not surprisingly, they disagreed.

“What that really means,” said Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, “is, ‘We’re going to take P2P off the agenda. We’ve knocked out a lot of household names (in legal battles), and now we’ve got to focus on creating a lot of growth, because we’re probably not going to thwart people’s desire to pass stuff around on the Internet.’”

The sense that the labels are hiding their anxiety by dismissing P2P companies as a threat was shared by others. All of the panelists agreed the playing field has changed, perhaps unfavorably, if you’re one of the major labels. Joey Patuleia, VP of Artist Relations with INTENT MediaWorks, said, “Very quickly, new artists are figuring out they don’t need labels.” One of the ideas behind social networking and P2P, as it relates to the artists who use it as a professional vehicle, is that anyone is empowered to promote themselves and their brand, to meet new people, and to spread their music on their own. The label is less necessary as a path to success.

The panel’s moderator, Marty Lafferty CEO of DCIA, finished the discussion by asking the panelists where they saw P2P going in the near and distant future. Daniel Harris, the CEO of MediaPass Network, answered, “P2P is associated with pirating, and that needs to change.” The re-branding of P2P as a legitimate technology tool will be one of the major hurdles.

Mr. Garland predicted that P2P is headed for smaller communities where the user finds more people with more similar tastes than they currently do. “The evolution is in lockstep with all of these other popular communities. All of these phenomena grow as the group shrinks. The people you are interacting with will become more and more like you. It will be smaller groups, and larger phenomena.”

More discussions on the relevance, importance, and future of P2P are sure to be discussed at the P2P Media Summit LA in Santa Monica, CA on October 23.