It’s a week after BitTorrent launched its BitTorrent Entertainment Network on 26th last month. I’ve been busy tracking and reading what people talked about the newest online services offered by BitTorrent. I believed that most people were still wondering around whether this pay-service will succeed in the market eventually. From a simple idea originally came up by Bram Cohen, founder of BitTorrent that there should be a better way to distribute contents on the Web, and now a new pay-service business model emerged, BitTorrent is on their way to prove the people that legally movie download is a viable business in the future.

BitTorrent claimed the Entertainment Network that they found is a true marketplace for one-stop distribution platform for movies, TV, music or podcasts. Now they charge $3.99 for the newly released movie while older titles are $2.99 to rent. TV shows and music videos are download-to-own at $1.99 each, according to their press release. Besides, rented content can be downloaded within 30 days from the transaction and 24 hours to watch it after the user made the payment, as listed in their terms of service. However, music and some games are offered at charge for the users.

I’ve been reading some news that people are complaining the issues of slow download, bandwidth hurdle, compatibility issues as well as the some other peer-to-peer (P2P) services are on par with BitTorrent, if not better, and etc. It seems that people are not adapt to this pay-service business model, and to some people, P2P means free at a certain point. When a user decides to buy a service, his/her expectation becomes higher, and higher everyday. There is always an obstacle for companies when they start to monetize their Web distributed movies, TV episodes, and etc. and assume, not able to send huge those digital files as mentioned just now in a steady stream to their users.

On the business side, I see BitTorrent as a company that engineers rule and now turn into the marketers rule. Despite the foresee potential of this emerged business model, there is still a shortcoming: I wonder the large percentage of BitTorrent’s current users would buy this idea and willingly to pay for the service render, from the download rates that I observed on their pages. It could be the biggest task for BitTorrent to open a new market for them right now. How they going to persuade their current user base to pay for the movie download is still a big question for months to come. It might leave a big room for new players to establish themselves in the market as a branded distribution medium for the existing BitTorrent’s users. Additionally, many people in the past have attributed the success of BitTorrent is due to the right timing, however, it became apparent that when a P2P become legal, it would definitely under pressure to perform.