Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent, in Cannes
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Posted on 01/27/2008 7:37:25 PM PST by Stoat
After a decade fighting to stop illegal file-sharing, the music industry will give fans today what they have always wanted: an unlimited supply of free and legal songs.
With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks.
The service has been endorsed by the very same record companies - including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music – that have chased file-sharers through the courts in a doomed attempt to prevent piracy. The gamble is that fans will put up with a limited amount of advertising around the Qtrax website’s jukebox in return for authorised use of almost every song available.
The service will use the “peer-to-peer” network, which contains not just hit songs but rarities and live tracks from the world’s leading artists.
Nor is a lack of compatibility with the iPod player expected to put fans off. Apple is unlikely to allow tracks downloaded from its rival to be compatible with iPods, but, while the iPod is the most popular music player, it has not succeeded in dominating the market: sales of the iPod account for 50 million out of 130 million total digital player sales. Qtrax has also spoken of an “iPod solution”, to be announced in April.
Qtrax files contain Digital Rights Management software, allowing the company to see how many times a song has been downloaded and played. Artists, record companies and publishers will be paid in proportion to the popularity of their music, while also taking a cut of advertising revenues.
The Qtrax team, which spent five years working on the system, promised a “game-changing” intervention in the declining recorded music market when the service was presented at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes.
The singer James Blunt gave Qtrax a cautious welcome. “I’m amazed that we now accept that people steal music,” he said. “I was taught not to steal sweets from a sweet shop. But I want to learn how this service works, given the condition the music industry is in.”
Qtrax, a subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Corporation, has raised $30 million (£15 million) to set up the service, which is available in the US and Europe from today. Allan Klepfisz, president of Qtrax, said: “Customers now expect music to be free but they do not want to use illegal sites. We believe this . . . has the support of the music industry and allows artists to get paid.”
Ford, McDonald’s and Microsoft are among the advertisers signed up to support what is thought to be the world’s largest legal music store. The service says that adverts will be nonintrusive and will not appear each time a song is played. As with iTunes, customers will have to download Qtrax software. They will own the songs permanently but will be encouraged to “dock” their player with the store every 30 days so it can gather information on which songs have been played.
Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of Vivendi Universal, said the crisis in the music industry had been overstated despite EMI’s radical cost-cutting. He said: “Look at Universal – we have double-digit profit margins. But we would like strong competition from the other major record companies to help the industry grow.” Universal has poached the Rolling Stones from EMI and Mr Levy said that others could follow as thousands of staff and artists are made redundant.
On the appearance of Qtrax, Mr Levy gave warning that the lack of compatibility between competing digital music players was as big a problem as file-sharing. And Paul McGuinness, the manager of U2, said that the sound quality of MP3 downloads was becoming an issue for bands and fans. “There is a growing consumer revolt against online audio quality,” he said.
I liked the headline for this story on another site:
Free DRM Infected Music with Ads
Ping to check out
I can guarantee it allows the company to see more than that. I bet it scans every music file on your system then monitors everything you listen to and sends everything it can about you back to the "company".
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By ALEX VEIGA – 1 hour ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A revamped online file-sharing service that promised to offer unlimited, free music downloads from all the major record labels hit an apparent snag Sunday after one denied it had given the service permission.
Qtrax touted in a press release Sunday morning that it was the first Internet file-swapping service to be "fully embraced by the music industry," and boasted it would carry up to 30 million tracks from "all the major labels."
New York-based Warner Music undermined that claim, declared in a statement that it "has not authorized the use of our content on Qtrax's recently announced service."
Universal Music Group and EMI Group PLC later confirmed they did not have licensing deals in place with Qtrax, noting discussions were still ongoing. A call to Sony BMG Music Entertainment was not immediately returned.
Justin Kazmark, a spokesman for New York-based Qtrax, declined to comment late Sunday.
Qtrax had been scheduled to make its online debut on Monday, a day after its splashy coming-out party at the annual Midem music business conference in Cannes, France.
The development marked an inauspicious start for Qtrax, the latest online music venture counting on the lure of free music to draw in music fans and on advertising to pay the bills, namely record company licensing fees.
The service was among several peer-to-peer file-sharing applications that emerged following the shutdown of Napster, the pioneer service that enabled millions to illegally copy songs stored in other music fans' computers.
Qtrax shut down after a few months following its 2002 launch to avoid potential legal trouble.
The company said it latest version of the service still lets users tap into file-sharing networks to search for music. Downwloads however come with copy-protection technology known as digital-rights management, or DRM, to prevent users from burning copies to a CD and calculate how to divvy up advertising sales with labels.
Qtrax downloads can be stored indefinitely on PCs and transferred onto portable music players, however.
The company also promises that its music downloads will be playable on Apple Inc.'s iPods and Macintosh computers until April 15. That's unusual, as iPods only playback unrestricted MP3s files or tracks with Apple's proprietary version of DRM, dubbed FairPlay.
Allan Klepfisz, Qtrax's president and chief executive said in a recent interview, declined to give specifics on how Qtrax will make its audio files compatible with Apple devices, but noted that "Apple has nothing to do with it."
Apple has been resistant in the past to license FairPlay to other online music retailers. That stance has effectively limited iPod users to loading up their players with tracks purchased from Apple's iTunes Music Store, or MP3s ripped from CDs or bought from vendors such as eMusic or Amazon.com.
Rob Enderle, technology analyst at the San Jose-based Enderle Group, said he expects Apple would take steps to block Qtrax files from working on iPods.
Last fall, the company issued a software update for its iPhones that created problems for units modified by owners so they would work with a cellular carrier other than AT&T Inc. As a result, some modified phones ceased to work after the software update.
The move prompted antitrust lawsuits on behalf of some consumers.
On the Net:
Qtrax: www.qtrax.com
I have no doubt. I seem to recall a big flap some months ago where it was discovered that Apple was hiding specific identifiers in their hosted music tracks that allowed them to determine if the purchaser of the song shared it with someone else.
I would imagine that a "hacked" version of the Qtrax software will appear within days proclaiming to circumvent any spyware functions of the software.
It will be interesting to watch all this play out, if you'll pardon the pun :-)
ping
Ping
That might be a woman.
PING!
Google search:
intitle:”index of” (mp3|wav|wma) rockford.files
“Nor is a lack of compatibility with the iPod player expected to put fans off. Apple is unlikely to allow tracks downloaded from its rival to be compatible with iPods”
Apple can ESAD. They’ll never get a penny from me. Pack of America hating, dope-huffing pervert hippies.
“Nor is a lack of compatibility with the iPod player expected to put fans off. Apple is unlikely to allow tracks downloaded from its rival to be compatible with iPods”
Apple can ESAD. They’ll never get a penny from me. Pack of America hating, dope-huffing pervert hippies.
No DRM here thanks. I will continue to control the software, and all files including audio on my PERSONAL computer, not big brother.
So if somebody downloads a DRM-infested 'free' song from Qtrax, strips the DRM from it and then uploads it as a Bit Torrent file would that person be committing a crime?
I suppose so.
Bump for later reading.
Thanks very much for the update! :-)
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