Labels Peer at Pirates for Insights

Say what you will about Internet pirates, their downloads speak volumes about what’s hot in music.That fact hasn’t been lost on record labels, which are increasingly subscribing — albeit discreetly — to companies that monitor illegal download traffic on peer-to-peer services. “If we weren’t looking at the data, we’d be pretty foolish,” says Jeremy Welt, head of new media at Madonna’s Maverick Records, one of the few labels that admits to subscribing to services that track illegal downloads. BigChampagne, another major player, acknowledges that Warner Bros., Interscope, Elektra, DreamWorks, Atlantic and Disney’s Hollywood label have all used its data, as well as MTV and MTV2.BigChampagne, which is based in Beverly Hills, Calif., and opened for business in 2000, tracks the two basic activities that can be monitored on peer-to-peer networks: “queries,” or searches, and “acquisitions,” or downloads.Then it matches a computer’s IP address to its zip code, creating a map of P2P activity. Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, says searches can isolate the use of any form of copyrighted material, from music, feature films, software and video games to instruction manuals or TV episodes.Maverick has subscribed to BigChampagne reports since 2000. Based on a REUTERS/Billboard article.