MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (Hypebot) – Startup ReDigi will be opening "the world's first online marketplace to legally recycle, buy and sell, used digital music files" this summer.
On the ReDigi Marketplace, music "owners" can "manage their music libraries by selling their unwanted digital music, or purchasing the music they do want, at drastically discounted prices".
Exactly how ReDigi will identify ownership or navigate the legal objections that labels have thrown at previous attempts (like Bopaboo) to resell digtal music is unclear; but there are a few hints:
"Being a group of computer geeks when someone tells us something can't be done, we immediately set a course to figure out how to do it," says the company's Larry Rudolph, a former member of the MIT faculty. "There are many layers that go into ReDigi that make it work, legal and technical being just a few. Our team figured out what could be done to legally ensure that consumers regain the freedom to manage their own personal music collections."
In addition to unspecified technology that ReDigi says will satisfy rights-holders, the company is also "granting a portion of each sale to artists and record labels each and every time a track resells."
A look at public portions of the site and an intro video show that at least some track sales on ReDigi will be in trade for credits that can be used to obtain other tracks rather than a cash transaction.
