BitTorrent’s Android App Updates Make Sharing Easy

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Published 19 Feb 2014

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Disclosure
BitTorrent isn’t exactly known for its apps. But the company is beefing up its smartphone presence. For on-the-go, peer-to-peer, and file-sharing. A redesign makes the BitTorrent apps for Android easier on the eyes. It adds a slew of new features, which is good news for the 50 million users who have downloaded  BitTorrent for Android.
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BitTorrent’s refreshed Android app lets you track your download progress.

Aside from the style overhaul, the apps now offer the ability to download individual files within a torrent. Either before or during your download, pick a download location, track your file’s download progress. And delete torrents alone or both torrents files. Now you can manage your files wherever you go.

Updated Desktop

BitTorrent also refreshed its more heavily used desktop clients and updated µTorrent the next version of BitTorrent will be released for 170 million monthly active users. Both updates are designed to feature BitTorrent Bundles. Or the packages of content BitTorrent distributes for artists like Madonna vs. Moby. Bundles rolled out in 2013 have been downloaded more than 60 million times. BitTorrent’s problem with Bundles was a discovery: making them more accessible for users to find. Now that the company’s desktop clients have Bundles baked into the menu, downloads could skyrocket.

Putting Bundles front and center in the BitTorrent clients is vital for the company’s next step. Allowing creatives to sell their content using a Bundle pay gate. So far, Bundles have been free collections of songs, films, interviews. And anything the artist wants to distribute across the system to drum up interest in their latest project. BitTorrent has no interest in being a store. Still, it does plan to give publishers tools to make money off their work. Advancing the BitTorrent goal of shedding its reputation as an illegal file-sharing company.

The BitTorrent µTorrent updates arrived just days after BitTorrent teased a mobile streaming application for its BitTorrent Live alpha project. No word on when the Live app will launch. But the company indicated that peer-to-peer live streaming could change how users consume news.