TMF, The Dutch music channel of MTV will use data from file sharing and P2P protocols in order to help them select playlists for their viewers. They believe that analyzing data from Bittorrent and other P2P platforms will help them understand better what music the people truly want. Although sales is a good indication of what people listen to, the files being shared can yield important insight to what internet users really listen to.

To use data from P2P, TMF subscribed to the services being offered by GfK, which is a P2P tracking company. GfK will then gather data from file-sharing networks and BitTorrent so that they can provide a list of music titles to TMF. This information will be used by TMF to determine the trends in the listening habits of their target audience and modify their playlist selection accordingly.

The TMF music channel wanted to count downloads as part of its Superchart. Naturally, such a move attracted protests from the music industry. They said that such a move would send out the wrong signal and might even encourage people to download music instead of buying them from legitimate distributors.

With the popularity of P2P and file-sharing networks, recording companies, and now music channels, are using P2P data in order to determine which single will be released.

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