(CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Altnet continues to stoke the evolution of digital entertainment, increasing its record label partnerships to more than 70 by forging fresh agreements with six more indie labels to distribute music and video via peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This comes in the midst of a partnership between the leading online digital entertainment distributor and the Vans Warped Tour to distribute and sell DVD-quality downloads of show footage the next day after each takes place.
The six indie labels are:
**Epitaph Records (Pennywise, Bouncing Souls, Bad Religion, Tom Waits);
**Koch Records (Junkie XL, Boyz II Men, Christine McVie, The Cardigans);
**Militia Group (Rufio, Reeve Oliver, Copeland, Blueprint Car Crash);
**Palm Pictures (De Lata, KOOP, Sidestepper);
**Side One Dummy Records (Flogging Molly, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Briggs, The Casualties); and
**Vagrant Records (Alkaline Trio, Dashboard Confessional, Paul Westerberg).
"We are delighted to offer music fans digital access to dozens of great bands while preserving the copyright integrity of the works and ensuring a fair distribution of revenues to the artist," states Altnet President Lee Jaffe. "The reason indie labels are embracing Altnet's technology is due to its penetration and flexibility. While giving our partners marketing tools to reach their audiences, we also give them the ability to control pricing. Our secure Digital Rights Management files, available on P2P networks such as Kazaa, allow labels to charge what they want for individual tracks. This is different from iTunes, for example, where everything is a standard 99 cents."
Altnet's technology and tools also offer labels the choice to make certain files free, such as music videos, for any number of plays or amount of time, allowing them to create their own packages of files–for instance, adding a free video with an album purchase) and to offer a price promotion for any length of time.
Commenting on the agreements, Douglas Mark, who serves as the attorney for Epitaph, Vagrant and Militia Group, as well as major-label artists such as Michelle Branch, said, "Independent labels, who are in large part financially barred from playing the radio and MTV game, now have access, via their own digitally protected files, to the huge consumer base of P2P users. This should prove to be a very healthy development for the marketing and selling of a broad variety of music." –Bob Grossweiner and Jane Cohen
