Quote:
Originally posted by willow
In theory, yes. In practice NO.
Why ? The placement costs money. It's only a matter of time before some non-anally retentive label realises that this is a great way of getting their next stars known to one and all...and they have something that the struggling artists don't have : A budget.
Even in the early 80s, when Mute Records was a relatively struggling indie label, I'm sure they'd have had no problem with paying vast amounts to push Depeche Mode, if they felt it was a viable option.
Let's face it, back then a lot of record labels happily gave their work to pirate radio stations, even though they realised a lot of pirate listeners probably taped whatever was broadcast. I know I did. 
Market forces will simply mean that we'll end up with commercial concerns (i.e. record labels. Even just one minor label with some serious cash will wreck Kazaa) pushing their stuff via the still illicit p2p methods.
It sounds a bit wacked, but I can see it happening.
What better way to control p2p - if you can't do it through force, or through the courts...do it through waving a huge wad of cash at the developers ?
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Good points,
willow. If there is a limited channel to buy attention on a p2p network (in the form of search results) and if it also proves out to work, it will be quickly saturated. In such a situation the channel owner will naturally raise the prices, and those with big PR budgets will end up dominating the channel. Try to expand the channel too much and people will start hating it and leave the network. Who wants to get 50 % spam in search results.
The solution? What
SA_Dave said. Let people own the promotion channels too, and base them on peer trust and shared interest in good music (instead of money). Then you don't need to push any search results to get new artists known in p2p communities. When people know that the recommendations come from other music lovers like themselves instead of industrial PR departments, they will be glad to read such recommendations. Especially if the recommended stuff is freely available.
- tg
