VODO is trying to help solve three problems:

(1) How do we get works (texts, films, music) distributed efficiently and widely using current P2P technologies?

(2) How do we draw attention to these works that can rival mainstream media?

(3) How can we help creators distributing through P2P systems with developing a sustainable, or even profitable, practice?

VODO approaches these problems by, first, gathering quality “unpublished” content (books, films, music) from a variety of sources. These may, for example, be commissioning agencies who know about works they have comissioned that could not be published; they may be “slush-piles” from literary agencies; they may be first albums submitted directly by bands, or offered by managers. The fact is that a lot of (perhaps even most) great content will never make it to a mainstream publication, for a variety of reasons that we won’t go into here.

Second, we filter the content. Once it’s ulpoaded, we allow visitors to VODO to download or stream any work they like, in order to vote on it. This results in a “winner” each month.

Third, we are bringing together some of the world’s largest P2P services and sites to help promote and distribute winning works. One work selected each month will be promoted prominently for 24hrs on sites that, collectively, have over 60m eyeballs. The promotions we place on these pages will link directly to the works, which will be seeded in partnership with our friends at Mininova.org and other Bittorrent services. Our estimate is that winning VODO works will obtain around 6m downloads, a not insignificant number!

Finally, at the core of VODO is a commitment to providing revenue for creators of media content, in a world in which the systems for distributing, copying and viewing that content are cross-territorial, rapidly changing and difficult to predict or control. Put simply, we provide a freely accessible “look up” table that stores hashes of works we’ve helped distribute, against payment details (e.g., paypal) for producers. With this table, any site that implements the VODO system can offer donation links for VODO works. In time we’re aiming to extend this to all sorts of works, even those not published by us. But as you can guess, this has some issues related to it!

With the system we’ve developed, we’ll be able to let consumers of media shared through P2P networks make voluntary donations to our creators wherever their works are shared.

If you want to know more, we encourage you to look at VODO, The Long Version.