The Altnet secure indexing system provides users of KaZaa’s P2P software with paid access to downloads from specific media partners.
Despite some early successes in the games sector, Altnet CEO Kevin Bermeister remains cautiously confident about persuading other content owners of the benefits of digital distribution.
Proving popular is Infogrames' Robot Arena video game complete with soundtrack from rap group MaddWest, attracting an average of 15,000 downloads each week.
According to Bermeister, one of his key challenges is the evangelisation of P2P technology, in terms of a proof of concept.
“It is pointless launching the service unless we can populate the site with quality content,” Bermeister said. “Thankfully we are getting positive responses from all the content owners.”
Announced in May, the Altnet distribution partnership with games publisher Infograms is already proving successful, as the publisher uses the service to breathe some life into older titles.
“Video game publishers are at the stage where they are more able to publish online,” Bermeister said. “Music distributors are progressing more cautiously, but we are making progress with independent artists.”
While Bermeister refused to be drawn on the potential value of the overall market, he indicated there were a number of specific goals Altnet would need to achieve before becoming profitable.
“Within the next couple of months there are some important milestones we will focus on achieving,” Bermeister said. “One of the key elements is demonstrating to the users the benefit of accessing media files from multiple partners, the technology’s ability to create cash flow for the content owners.”
Aside from the evangelisation process itself, Bermeister identified two key elements as core to the success of the online payment system.
“Content owners have to understand that P2P is simply the shortest distance between the viewer and the technology,” Bermeister said. “Our own value as a company is predicated on the popularity of our search tools, which in turn depends on which partners we manage to sign up.”
