Moby's Latest Is Top Bundles Seller

Usually when you think about BitTorrent you think of piracy, but the service has been working hard over the last year to go legit with its Bundles offering. A bundle is a collection of free content files like an album, with a gateway to paid premium content as well.

Bundles are beginning to gain traction, with over 60 million downloads in 2013 and an impressive number of big name artists signing on. As you can see from the chart on the left, Moby topped the chart with almost 9 million shares, but other major artists like Kaskade, Linkin Park, Public Enemy and Madonna were also included.

The secret behind Bundle's success is that they're included with every uTorrent or BitTorrent application, so the numbers can add up quickly.

Bundles are still flying under the radar, so you might not hear much about them at the moment, but with numbers like the chart provides, it won't be long until this becomes a staple release format of artists everywhere.

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A New Media Format From......BitTorrent?

One of the big problems of the modern digital music industry is bundling, or more accurately, lack of it. Back when the business was a roaring success at the top of its game, the CD album (and before that the vinyl album) brought in most of the revenue. Sure, singles were a reasonable business (at least in the vinyl days), but the album was where the big money was made. Of course, that's all gone away in our current Music 3.0 world where the single song is the king.

Now comes an interesting new bundle that's not exactly an album or movie, but more of a combination of music, video, flyer and store. And it's all built into the same file. The only potential problem is that it's from the service that most creatives love to hate - BitTorrent.

Basically the BitTorrent Bundle is a file that acts as a graphic, telling you anything an advert normally would, but the other pieces can be unbundled as the user buys in. For instance, Ultra, the label that brought you such EDM artists as David Guetta, Tiesto, deadmau5, and Calvin Harris, is trying the new bundle with Kaskade.

The bundle acts as a virtual flyer over social media, and if someone subscribes to his mailing list they then unlock behind-the-scenes footage. Want to buy some music - it's already there. Make a donation, and see some video. It's all up to how to configure it.

The music business needs a new concept in bundling and potentially this could be it. The big problem, of course, is that it's from BitTorrent, which the industry (not to mention artists and songwriters) view it as a bastion for piracy. That said, they do have 170 million active users that you can immediately access.

The Ultra BitTorrent Bundle is a first alpha release, so we don't know what the bugs are yet, but on the surface it's a great concept. Check out this video for more info.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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