One of the most despised men in the world as far as the FBI is concerned is an almost  7 foot, 40 year old German,  by the name of Kim Schmitz, but you may know him as  Kim Dotcom. He was behind the music sharing site called Megaload which launched in 2005 and at one time was the 13th most visited site on the internet. Kim made millions but the  US authorities allege he also created a massive online piracy system which cost the music industry over $500 million.

This high-tech entrepreneur celebrated his birthday (January 21) by launching a new download sharing service called Baboom, which will allow users to download music, video, audio and pictures as well as stream content.  So far, the only songs that are available and free to download are songs that Dotcom himself recorded. Based on a quick listen, I doubt any radio stations will be rushing to add any of these songs to the playlist. 

What is untested as yet is if artists will see the benefit in putting their music on his service where Dotcom wants that music to be available for free, and fans will only pay pay for it if they really like it.

Word is the service will move of out “preview mode” later this year and Dotcom is promising to shake up the market. He says as well as allowing users to pay to download music, they will also be able to earn rewards for free music in exchange for installing a browser advertising plugin.

In the meantime, Dotcom’s talent for self-publicity has resulted in 80,000 music plays in the first hour the site was live and over 345,000 followers on his site just 24 hours after the launch.