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The Fraunhofer IDMT develops new ideas and solutions
for music distribution. The systems refer especially to the
comprehensive network of users and the resulting modified
user behaviour. One idea is to use the sales-increasing effect
of peer-to-peer systems for legal music distribution.
Freebies are special promotion-files which can be exchanged
without copyright infringement or legal restrictions. They
just consist of a poorer quality music file.
The poorer quality can mean e. g.:
- poorer sound quality
- shortened original
- included promotion jingles within the music file
If a buyer pays and downloads a music file from an online
portal he automatically receives a Freebie additionally to
his original music file. The customer can then again use this
Freebie to promote the purchased music. And he gets the possibility
to modify the Freebies and personalize them (like inclusion
of text, graphics etc.). All necessary data and information,
among other things also the explicit reference to the first
buyer, will be included in the personalized Freebies.
The buyer recommends the bought music to interested people
by giving out the Freebies and the recipient can now listen
to the Freebies and extract and use the embedded information.
This process can be handled through a special client software,
which again can immediately process the purchase of the original
music file if wanted.
If the recipient of a Freebie decides to buy the original
music, the buyer who recommended that song receives an incentive.
Other incentive possibilities are also applicable.
Freebies are a very interesting and new approach to legal
music distribution and can also be handed along over mobile
phones. The basic technologies of Freebies are MPEG formats
(e.g. AAC) which make the handling of these files very easy.
There are two different kinds of Freebies:
The standard version of a Freebie comes as explained with
the purchase of an original music file. This Freebie-file
is very small in comparison to the original music file and
therefore, exchanging Freebies among users is very easy.
This is a big advantage and makes the system very flexible,
safe and easy to integrate.
The second version of Freebies is based on partial encryption.
That means that the exchanged Freebie consists already of
the original music file, but without the decryption the user
can only listen to the poor-quality part. If he decides to
purchase the music, he then receives the licence and the decryption
key. For this Freebie application specific security technologies
are necessary.
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