EMI'S MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS

EMI has contracted with Audible Magic to use its "audio fingerprinting" technology, which will presumably serve to both track licensed music and monitor unauthorized distribution of EMI content on the Net.

If you’ve read this far, it’s safe to assume you either know or care what the above means—and that your romantic life in high school was a severe disappointment. We feel your pain.

In addition to providing new and catalog music to Audible Magic, EMI will recommend the company to affiliates and licensees.

It’s supposedly the first big pact between a major label group and a provider of "Content Based Identification Services," or CBID, as it’s called on the street.

"We’re excited about entering into this relationship. We believe Audible Magic’s systems will provide us with the ability to understand and capitalize on the opportunities offered by the evolving digital marketplace," said Jay Samit, senior vice president, new media, EMI Recorded Music. "Audible Magic has emerged as the only viable vendor in their market segment with a wide range of applications and technologies ideal for our needs. It’s to EMI’s advantage to move quickly and clearly to form a partnership with this strong industry ally."

In a nutshell, CBID tech studies the ones and zeroes that form a digitized, copyrighted song—then finds those digits in the ether. This could be useful for tracking Internet radio spins, if the incredibly bitter disputes over Internet radio ever get resolved. It could also be used for measuring user activity with respect to content on a paid online service, if one of them ever got any traction.

Well, it can definitely be used to see which of said copyrighted songs are being swapped as MP3s on peer-to-peer services. In your face, Grokster!

In a possibly related development, EMI is currently seeking a "VP of Anti-Piracy," which sounds like a way sweet gig.