Catherine Meek, David Hilborn, Bram Cohen, and Matt Mason talk BitTorrent artist tools at SF MusicTech.

Over the course of the past year, we’ve partnered with musicians, filmmakers, and storytellers on a series of experiments. Our goal has been to create a more sustainable distribution model for the Internet’s creators and fans. Within 365 days, we’ve been able to create a legitimate content ecosystem 85-petabytes-big; connecting 16 innovative artists with 170 million activist listeners.

We’ve learned that BitTorrent users invest money and time to support artists. We’ve learned that they want to see better content in the BitTorrent ecosystem. We’ve learned that artists who distribute work via BitTorrent create stronger connections with fans.

And we’ve learned that our work is just beginning. Oh, man.

Because distribution is only a small part of the challenge facing today’s creators and publishers. Scalable, sustainable distribution is critical. But it’s contingent on discovery.

Today, we demo-ed an update to BitTorrent Surf that helps solve for content discoverability; giving our content partners the advantage of search prioritization. The BitTorrent platform is now optimized for artist visibility, in addition to reach.

BitTorrent can be applied to the challenge of artist discovery and distribution. And we think that it can be applied to the creative process, too. On Friday, we released SoShare as a public Beta; providing artists with an elegant, unlimited solution for managing collaborative projects. This winter, we opened up BitTorrent Live to Beta broadcasters, as a way of cutting infrastructure costs to expression. And for over a year now, we’ve been playing around with the transmedia and monetization potential of content published through BitTorrent, as BitTorrent Bundles.

Like we said, this is only the start. Surf, SoShare, Live, and Bundles are part of an ongoing series of experiments to make digital creativity sustainable. Want to get involved? Test drive ‘em in BitTorrent Labs.