New Tool Tracks Online Media Consumption

Carl Bialik writes "Technology and market research company BigChampagne is introducing a measurement tool called BCDash to let media companies quickly track how people -- legally or illegally -- use their products online. BigChampagne said BCDash will bring together data from AOL, Yahoo Music, iTunes, and Wal-Mart, along with estimates of illegal file sharing activity for specific titles. It's meant as a marketing tool, the WSJ reports: 'Media companies have often been caught flat-footed when a video or song takes off online. By the time they try to capitalize on it, the opportunity often has passed.'"

Wired article, October 2003

[AndroidCat]

BigChampagne is Watching You [wired.com].

Re:O RLY?

[MattskEE]

As already mentioned by others, GNUTella networks are fairly easy to monitor, and bittorrent sites usually post statistics, and could easily be monitored with a modified client.

Also, IRC, where a lot of files start their meandering paths across the internet, can also be monitored. The technology behind IRC search sites like PacketNews could be used to monitor how many people in how many channels are sharing your file, and in some cases, when files are requested with triggers in the main channel, you can find out about how wide your file is spreading.

It may also be a good idea to read this article on file sharing [wired.com], which covers the process many files follow to make their way from release groups to the general public. In the article you will see read about someone who is an insider in many file sharing rings who consults with media companies on how their files are spreadin

There are, naturally, file sharing vectors that they have no capacity to monitor, but they can get a very good picture with a bit of easily obtained data and a bit statistics. It's hard to say *exactly* how accurate it is, but it can certainly be used as a reliable relative indicator on which files are downloaded more than others.