Some 63 million votes were cast to determine this season’s winner of TV talent fest American Idol, a higher number than any U.S. President has ever received. With so much fuss over these amateur crooners, the show’s record label, RCA Music Group, decided to turn to cutting-edge security technology to deliver the winning debut single to radio stations—without news of the winner leaking out.

To keep things under wraps, RCA selected a biometric product that analyzes an individual’s typing pattern to identify who’s doing the typing. Digital media distribution company Musicrypt says the product enabled it to send winner Taylor Hicks’ debut “Do I Make You Proud” to 1,400 stations without a hitch.

Pioneered by Issaquah, Washington-based startup BioPassword, the technology could be picked up by more record companies keen on protecting their music. The company was named to Red Herring’s 2006 list of the top 100 private North American companies (see RH 100 N.A. – Security).

RH 100 N.A. – Security

Typically, record labels send a single on tape or CD to radio stations by mail, increasing the chances of piracy, says Chris Montgomery, Musicrypt’s executive vice president of marketing. “There are a number of recordings that are of high importance to the label and those shouldn’t be released too soon,” he says.

That’s why Musicrypt says it opted for BioPassword, a web-based system that requires no additional software or hardware. BioPassword measures time between each keystroke, or how long a finger takes to get to the next key, and how long a finger stays on one key to determine a person’s identity. So when a pre-determined set of recipients received the single from Musicrypt, they were obliged to authenticate themselves using BioPassword’s technology before they could listen to the single.

As more content like video and music is delivered over the Internet, content producers and distributors are opting for easy-to-use authentication solutions, says Doug Wheeler, BioPassword’s vice president of marketing.

But there have been hiccups. Most recently, Sony faced lawsuits over its digital rights technology, which purportedly dumped invasive software on user machines. In the end, it settled with everyone, promising to stop using the technology.

Biometric products like BioPassword’s could be one alternative, says experts, but there’s a catch. BioPassword’s technology has a slightly higher error rate than other biometric solutions. But the ease of use of its technology—it can be used with any keyboard—makes it appealing enough for digital media companies searching for better ways to protect their content.