Imagine this:

P2P as the latest, greatest marketing platform for your content.

As I have explained to Tom a number of times, marketing people in the record business are pretty smart. And they know a lot of different ways to skin the cat.

So I have absolutely no doubt that some of them are using P2P and free distribution of content to help create the seed of interest in artists that have high priority inside the company. P2P would not be used generally by the marketers - it would have to be very selective. And this for a number of reasons.

First - they wouldn't want it generally known that they were offering content for free. The main reason for that is that it would probably create a very unfortunate legal precedent with respect to the cases that are being fought in court in the US and other places that demonize the free uploading of content.

Second - to do this effectively would be quite expensive. It would need very close monitoring to determine where the break out sales markets were likely to be.

Third - it would need to be on a "need to know" basis. Too easy for things like this to slip out and become commonly known.

But if you subscribe to the belief that the record industry - in the US certainly - has been involved in payola in the past and is probably continuing to do it now, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that they would use any and all means to get a hit if they could get away with it.

So the moral of the story is the "get away with it" part.

I happen to believe that they are using P2P networks to seed files that they want to prioritize.

How do they do it? That is something that we can discuss one to one - sorry to be a tease!

But here is the point of this:

If the major companies can do this, why not the small companies/small artists/independants...

Here is why:

Have a look at ZeroSec. This is a portal that points you to free downloads of TV and Movies. There are plenty of them, I know. But what is interesting about this one and others, when you look at the landscape from the view of Australia is that if you go to the TV page for ZeroSec, you start to see a lot of Australian TV programs.

I can imagine that there are a bunch of Aussies that are uploading and interested in Australia's Next Top Model. But I can imagine that there would be a growing number of people all round the world that would be interested in it and in some of the newer drama for TV programs being produced in Australia too.

Why wouldn't P2P be the great leveller in marketing? Why wouldn't you, as a TV producer, not try to build a presence for your material online, and particularly before you go to a global TV content marketing conference like Mip?

If the music business can do it, why not the TV industry? And why not the book publishing business too?

P2P is the great opportunity for entrepreneurial marketing. The big studios want to demonize it because it will keep the little guys from using it.

The movie industry found out how incredibly successful viral marketing can be from The Blair Witch Project, arguably the most profitable movie of all time... not necessarily the biggest grossing, but dollar for dollar, production cost to marketing cost to revenues generated, it has to be the most successful.

P2P is the most opportune platform there is for viral marketing. It is easy, inexpensive, and its where the early adopters hang out. Sounds like a great place to build a content brand to me. Particularly for an indie operator.