Do BitTorrent Bundles Work and Should You Use Them?

If you had internet and were alive during the early 2000s, you no doubt think of BitTorrent as that thing for pirating LCD Soundsystem singles. In reality, they manage a suite of legitimate applications devoted to fulfilling the promise of the interwebs. One of their latest services to attract attention is Bundles, the file-sharing company's answer to media publishing.

Officially launched in May of 2013, BitTorrent Bundles was established with the goal of enabling musicians and filmmakers to get their content into the hands of the public – how and when they want. Since then, the service has collaborated with a continuous stream of A-list talent from all ends of the music industry. Diplo, Thom Yorke, and Azealia Banks have all released successful Bundles.

We connected with BitTorrent's Chief Content Officer, Matt Mason, to share the company's plans and philosophies surrounding the platform. Matt, a veteran pirate radio DJ, RWD magazine founder, and author of The Pirate's Dilemma explains why BitTorrent's principles of efficiency, resilience, and empowering end users are so important to musicians. "If you're a band trying to get a song out,Google Play giving out 22 million songs for a tenner isn't helping you do that," he explains. "Netflix not giving you data on where people are watching your films isn't helping you understand where you should release your next one." As he puts it, "the promise of the Internet has not been delivered."

For a year and half, the BitTorrent team experimented with various ways to address the idea of getting content directly from publishers to their audience. "There is no 'One Size Fits All' business model that we can roll out for everyone," Mason says. This problem was where the idea for flexible "Gates" came in to play. Gates allow a musician to define exactly how they want to give away their music—whether they want to give away three songs in exchange for a customer sharing an email address or the whole album for $5 is completely up to the the artist.

Another benefit of Bundles that Mason is keen to highlight is data. Most savy booking agents, managers, or promoters will tell you that data on their audience is the most important resource an artist can have, and Bundles provide a full analytics dashboard to help musicians to target new markets or improve existing ones. Matt provides me with a case study where an early Bundles supporter, Counting Crows, used their data from Bundles to convince a number of promoters in Europe to upgrade their shows from arenas to stadium shows. While results will obviously vary depending on the size of the artist, it's certainly a big boost decision-makers at all levels.

Criticisms of the project are that, depite however many downloads a release accrues, it's all done outside of the traditional sphere of influence, meaning that charting and sales are rendered moot. For many, this isn't an issue, but for larger artists, getting that gold record might be on their to-do list.

After our chat with Matt Mason, we wanted to find out if BitTorrent's PR actually lived up to the hype for small producers; knowing that Mad Decent or Fool's Gold can release successful albums is cool and all, but the platform needed to be able to benefit people without marketing budgets and widespread industry support. We pitched Comets We Fall, a talented LA producer with a small following, on releasing his next EP with BitTorrent and then took a back seat from that point on. Several weeks and many downloads later, we got in touch with his manager, Nathan Hoy, to reflect on the experience.

"First and foremost, BitTorrent Bundles' UI is intuitive and easy to navigate," Nathan tells us. The whole process of setting up a Bundle took less than ten minutes, he explains. What's more, after racking up 880k downloads and collecting 20k emails, the team are more than satisfied and said that they would absolutely release with Bundles again. They also learned valuable information about the type of content that people responded well to. Throughout the release, there was a strong demand for premium files (accapellas and stems) from music producers in the BitTorrent community and with this newfound knowledge, Nathan says they will definitely be including further "producer packs" on follow-up releases.

While results will obviously vary from musician to musician, Comets We Fall's experience indicated that the potential for success is there for up-and-coming producers looking to experiment with BitTorrent Bundles in addition to the legions of A-list musicians already on board. As media streaming platforms become stingier with content and looser with ads, BitTorrent is presenting one of the few positive innovations in online media we've seen this year.

Ziad Ramley is on Twitter: @ZiadRamley