Hoping to assuage ongoing concerns that it’s not doing enough to stop copyrighted music from being shared illicitly, Napster today unveiled a “multi-year strategic agreement” with digital rights service Loudeye Technologies Inc. — Napster will use Loudeye’s technology to uniquely identify music shared on Napster.
Loudeye will generate digital fingerprints and metadata for more than two million music tracks on Napster. Loudeye will combine its own catalog with new releases — the company has already established licensing relationships with the five major music companies and several hundred independent labels.
Napster CEO Hank Barry explained that his company’s relationship with Loudeye would help them with their efforts to create a membership-based service.
“Loudeye’s fingerprints and metadata will ultimately help us track millions of unique music files on our service, so we can fulfill our commitment to compensate artists, songwriters, music publishers and record companies,” said Barry.
Napster indicated that it has already received some digital fingerprint info from Loudeye, and is now working to implement fingerprint-based filtering on the service. Fingerprints for new material will be added on a weekly basis.