UPDATED 12:06 EDT / NOVEMBER 01 2010

LimeWire Ghost Town After Shut Down, Still Clings to Future Plans

LimeWire has let go of 29 of their 100-person workforce in the wake of a federal injunction against their operations. However, in spite of this, the peer-to-peer software outfit keeps intimating that they’re continuing work on a music-related project. Peter Kafka from All Things D waxes thoughtful on the subject in his article,

I don’t know whether LimeWire’s new service, which the company has been referring to internally as “Grapevine”, will also be based on peer-to-peer technology or not; I should have more on that later. But I do know that the service won’t have any hope of working unless it can get the big music labels to sign on.

That’s theoretically possible, because LimeWire and owner Mark Gorton have talked with the labels about that sort of thing before. But they’ve talked for a very long time, and have never reached a pact in the past.

In my mind peer-to-peer protocols could be used to enhance speed and buffering of streaming music delivery. Since P2P technology gets faster and better when people near each other are streaming the same source, multiple people in the same office listening to the same radio stream could lessen the load on the primary stream source by streaming their buffers to nearby neighbors. Sounds like a grapevine to me!

Ah, but this is just blatant speculation on my part.

With services like Pandora switching to pay services (free for 40 hours a month, then you have to pay) and Amazon.com and iTunes, music labels might do well dipping into the Internet radio scene. Possibly because streaming radio, just like terrestrial radio, is an excellent way for them to hawk their wares to the public; distinctively streaming radio is a common comfort for people at work.

While the recording industry as seen fit to stomp on peer-to-peer technologies like LimeWire, Napster, and the like, they might be more amenable to technologies that they can see how to more readily monetize and control. As a result of the injunction, LimeWire may just be trying their best to sell-out to the industry in hopes of reducing the fiscal punishment that will come out of this latest judgment.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU