Bulletproof Bitmunk

Bitmunk is very cool. It's a P2P digital file marketplace, where users can acquire DRM-free music directly from artists, in any format. Better still, users get a royalty percentage for every track re-distributed from their network node (depending on rules set up by the rights owner.)

Bitmunk allows any artist to list their songs for sale, associating a royalty with each song or album. No matter who sells the work on Bitmunk, the artist always gets the royalty deposited directly into their bank account. Anybody can re-sell the files thus ensuring that every artist always has the option of a mass distribution channel.

"There is no such thing as an illegal file on Bitmunk," said Dave Longley, CTO of Digital Bazaar, "Every file on our network has been cleared by the artist for sale". This ensures that anybody re-selling the file on Bitmunk is allowed to do so and collect a fee for providing the song on the network.

I saw a prototype C2C content marketplace over P2P a couple of years ago, but it didn't get out of the lab. The added sweet-spot for Bitmunk is the super-distribution business model, which is inspired. They're basically creating a marketplace not just for content, but also for rights. The notion of a distributed content marketplace is what Kendra has been trying to achieve for some time; now it looks like Bitmunk has done it, albeit over P2P.