 Based in San Francisco and backed by angel investor Ron
Conway--who also initially funded Napster--Snocap has for months been
quietly writing code and building the bridges to the music world that
Napster lacked, according to sources familiar with the company.
Fanning's role as the
creator of the music industry's archenemy does not seem to be holding him
back. Snocap's plan, which involves identifying music files being traded
through file-swapping networks and then attaching a price tag to them, is
resonating well with music industry executives.
"It's a pretty well
thought-out idea, but the success of it hinges on everybody in the
ecosystem getting involved," said one record label executive familiar with
Snocap. "The key to its success is the peer-to-peer companies agreeing to
participate. If they do participate, it could be phenomenal."
Snocap has been working on ways to
identify songs, as they are traded through a file-swapping network,
including using a technique called "audio fingerprinting," which monitors
the sonic characteristics of music files.
That fingerprinting tool could be
integrated into the file-swapping software itself in several different
ways, sources said. When a file is being downloaded, the software could
check its "fingerprint" and then compare it against a database Snocap
operates, for example.
Once an identification is made, the
download could be blocked, unless the computer user pays a fee, as if they
were downloading a song from iTunes or another digital song store.
Alternately, some mechanism could be established, under which the
file-swapping network operator would pay for the downloads that are
tracked by Snocap's system and would later be reimbursed by subscription
fees or advertising revenue. | 
