BitTorrent, the company behind the BitTorrent protocol, is a fairly legit business, even though the company's protocol has been used extensively for piracy (it wasn't really created for that). Around the world, copyrighted material owners have gone to great lengths in order to shut down or block access to a number of torrent sites.
But unfortunately, these efforts' results were about next to nothing.
Despite its protocols being used by many to do certain infringements, BitTorrent is looking to carve out its own niche. Previously, BitTorrent has been working to expand its portfolio with Live multichannel video broadcasting platform, now it's aiming for video and music streaming markets.
And this time without the pirates.
The company has launched its own music streaming service with a new app rolling out to Android, iOS and Apple TV. The service is called BitTorrent Now.
For the most part, the service is like any other streaming app: Users can open it up, browse to watch or listen, and click the play button. The big difference is that most of the contents available are from smaller artists. As the name suggest, it highlights things that is "now" present from up and coming, small and independent artists instead of established artists and labels.
Users can listen to their favorite artists and follow them straight from the app.
Contents on BitTorrent Now are mostly free, but artists can choose to make it paid if they want to. Free contents are ad-supported, and those that participate in the BitTorrent's pilot program for ad streaming, will get 70 percent of the revenue.
Content won't just be restricted to music or videos. BitTorrent Now also allows VR contents, along with anything else people may want to upload.
Straith Schreder, BitTorrent's VP of creative initiatives, said that:
"Being able to shine a light on some of these creators [and giving them] agency to connect with a passionate global base of film and music fans is really important."
Since the short-lived but the game-changing days of Napster, the word "torrent" has somehow become the unspoken threats for media companies. With BitTorrent regarded as one of which that popularizes that P2P culture, it's still a legal business.
Even though the company's protocol has been popular for piracy, it wasn't initially created for that. Founded in 2001, the protocol by Bram Cohen is meant to ease the distribution of large amounts of data over the internet.
While the problem isn't coming from the torrenting concept itself, it's just the things that are torrented are mostly copyrighted items. The internet has solved a lot or problems, but torrenting is something that didn't exist before the internet has high-speed connectivity.
Speed enables people to share a lot more than they can ever before. And here, BitTorrent Now, is "a platform that’s powered by awesome people like you."
BitTorrent Now's app currently doesn't rely on any kind of peer-to-peer networking (P2P) for streaming its contents. So users can say that everything in the app is initially 100 percent legal because they're uploaded by the creators themselves.
What his means is that BitTorrent Now's service won't facilitate access to the many online sources of popular pirated material. BitTorrent Now is the company's initial attempt to provide a differentiated product, making it compete with Apple's iTunes, Spotify to even Netflix as far as content is concerned. This is because BitTorrent directs streamed contents straight from its servers rather than using its popular BitTorrent protocol where everyone is an uploaded and downloader.
So being a relatively new service, the selection of music is relatively small.
However, BitTorrent CEO Jerm Johnson said that the company is "actively developing the P2P components, which require varying levels of effort for each platform."