Discussion:

Matt Mason is the chief content officer at BitTorrent, and the driving force behind the company’s “Bundles” initiative, which gets musicians, filmmakers, authors and other creators to release their work packaged up as torrent files, with fans unlocking the full contents usually by entering their email address.

Kaskade, DJ Shadow, Moby, De La Soul, Pixies and Public Enemy are among the artists who have tried it, but Radiohead front man Yorke is the first to use a new “pay-gate” feature. Instead of exchanging an email address for his album, fans pay $6 (£3.68).

Source:

The Guardian

Date:

September 28th, 2014

Link:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/26/bittorrent-thom-yorke-major-labels-music

Questions: 

1) The article suggests that music lovers will pay to get through a “pay-gate” set up by BitTorrent because the legitimate bundle of music from the artist “has a much larger swarm than any of the illegal versions – that’s huge for the industry”.  This suggests that people are willing to pay for speed.  Do you agree, and why or why not?

2) The chief content officer at BitTorrent says “It’s interesting, the whole U2 thing [where Apple pushed the new U2 album to everyone’s iTunes account without asking them if they wanted it]. I’m an iPhone user, and I’m so pissed off that thing’s on my phone. I haven’t had time to delete it yet, but Apple’s removal website is probably the best thing that a technology company released in terms of a music product this year,” he said. “It’s been a pretty miserable time for innovation.”  How do you feel about Apple pushing a band’s music to your iTunes account, and is it a violation of privacy or not?