iMesh releases legal BearShare (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - IMesh is set to unveilThursday (August 17) the latest version of BearShare, itsrecently acquired fellow peer-to-peer network.

The new and legal service, BearShare 6.0, will continue tooffer the traditional benefits of a P2P file-sharing experiencebut with additional features, iMesh executive chairman RobertSummer said. Among these are a "ToGo" portable musicsubscription service and social networking capabilities.

Subscriptions will be free for the next 30 days, afterwhich the service will introduce an as yet undetermined monthlyfee.

"Ours is a unique offering that addresses that massiveaudience of free music downloaders that the industry is tryingto bring to heel," Summer said.

The existing iMesh service, which went live a year ago,will not be affected by the launch of BearShare 6.0. The twoservices, whose users already can interact, will co-exist.

Both BearShare ToGo and iMeshToGo services can be used withmost MP3 players and all Plays for Sure portable devices. Theyare not compatible with Apple's iPods because themarket-leading devices do not support subscription services.

Summer said BearShare 6.0 features include instantmessaging, the ability to make playlists and manage musiccollections, advanced search capabilities and significantlyimproved music discovery tools. A special feature calledBearShare People encourages users to express their identity bysharing their musical preferences with other users. The servicealso keeps a record of purchases and offers ringtones.

"In building in these features that were not fully presentin our initial launch, we now have an entirely stable site,"Summer said. "It's our expectation that it's going to beexponentially effective in causing free users to becomebuyers."

The available library consists of 15 million music tracks,among them 2.5 million songs licensed from the major labels.

Founded in 1999, the MusicLab subsidiary iMesh is one ofthe original P2P services to transition to a commercial modelthat guarantees payment to its rightsholders.

(Chris Marlowe in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

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