Jazz Odyssey

Bertlesmann announced that they will launch a file sharing service in Germany before the end of this year, with a rollout to other territories planned throughout 2006. The service will be called GNAB (which is the word “bang” spelled backwards…illustrating the Spinal Tap wisdom that there is indeed a “fine line between clever and stupid”) and according to this article from AP it “uses a decentralized peer-to-peer network to offer downloads whose original content is hosted on centralized servers”.

So essentially Bertie is getting down with OPB (Other People’s Bandwidth)…a centralized server introduces the content into a controlled P2P network which allows the content to be distributed via shared user bandwidth but the network remains gated to ensure that only authorized content can be shared. This is smart–leverage the core strengths of P2P technology but prevent it from becoming a piracy free-for-all.

I predict that you’ll start seeing more and more of this type of service coming from intellectual property owners. With broadband penetration continuing to grow and the portability of video becoming more of a mainstream factor thanks to last weeks introduction of the video-enabled iPod, the demand for more digital content continues to snowball, and bandwidth fees to serve this content from centralized servers are getting huge. Why not offload some of this cost onto ISPs and improve the delivery with smart P2P technology that can deliver packets from multiple points to improve the consumers download speed?

I further predict that you’ll see reward systems put into place for those who help share the most, and then you may start to see ISPs begin to experiement with variable pricing models for heavy bandwidth users. What would be a winning play for consumers and businesses using this type of service is for a smart company to develop a universal software client that allows multiple networks to use a single piece of software, preventing consumers from having lots of software applications on their computers that essentially do the same thing (sort of like now with iTunes, Real Player and Windows Media Player often occupying a single computer). Apple, are you listening?