BigChampagne is Watching You

Fascinating Wired article on how one company is turning file-sharing into the world's biggest focus group.

Big Champagne, the company in question, is selling P2P download data to record companies, so that they can push radio stations to air "hot" tracks that aren't getting much rotation - which in turn, can lead to more record sales.

"Fleischer is VP of sales and marketing for a company called BigChampagne, which has a better window into consumer demand. By matching partial IP addresses to zip codes, the firm's software creates a real-time map of music downloading. The company sells subscriptions to its database that let a user track one album for $7,500; bigger labels have annual deals for up to $40,000 per month."