Download 25 million songs for free - legally

[admin]

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.

, 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 $US30 million ($34 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 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.

[fandtm666]

dam i bet that woman who got done for the 12 songs and 200k would be reading this article and crying(i know i would)

[admin]

shit yeah

But it does look like this is going to be the way of the future for record companies and the death of CD's as a way of releasing your album.

[Globe]

Looks like a mozilla browser based system to view ads, I wonder if adblockplus would work to kill the ads?

I'm going to give it a try.

[Woodstock]

can ya actaully download as mp3 and play on say car cd/mp3 player or only going some fancy new format that can only played by there browser thing ?

[best4less]

Looks like I will need a bigger hard drive
mmmmmmmmm 25 million times 4 meg =?????? lol

[fandtm666]

yep and now what will all the p2p haters say , they can not call you leecher anymore for downloading LEAGAL material.I honestly think that it will be the same when the tv companies start putting all the tv shows up they will also be p2p as it will save their bandwidth

[roguefan99]

Actually fandtm666 you are pretty close to the arguement but just off slightly. Its not so much the p2phaters that are going to be involved but the ISPs that now shape p2p traffic. It will be interesting to see what happens with Comcast and TimeWarner cable connections in the US (I believe both are shaping from what I have read) and the companies that are doing it here. Maybe ISPs will have to become honest (yea right) with what they are doing with our connections and maybe even come out front and tell us.

Hmm the site is damn slow, I'm hoping its their promotion thats causing the problems not something else!

[Uncle Fester]

Seems like this is not quite sorted out:

From Wikipedia:

Qtrax is an ad-supported P2P music service that has claimed to have made license agreements with the four major record labels (EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group).
In actuality, three of the four companies have stated that no deals have been made.
Qtrax also claims to have 25,000,000 songs available for free legal download. The files will have Microsoft's Windows Media digital rights management technology applied, restricting usage of files in as yet to be determined ways. Most major labels will probably restrict usage to 5 plays before you're required to buy a track.
Songs can be loaded on to portable media players compatible with WMDRM; this currently excludes Apple's iPod line of portable media devices, which use FairPlay DRM. However, company representatives claim to have discovered a work-around that will allow for iPod support in the near future.

The Qtrax beta software will be available to download at midnight EST on 28th January '08 (5am GMT, 29th January '08).

Despite announcements to the contrary, Universal Music Group, EMI and Warner Music Group have not yet finalised agreements with Qtrax

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,”

At last somebody woke up!
The lower end MP3 quality that is standard on P2P could only be seen as an advertising gimmick anyway. Piracy?... what rubbish!
The consumer has to first have a chance to listen and get accustomed to the music before he/she buys a CD and the choice on commercial radio broadcasts is very limited. Lesser known bands hardly had a chance.

Despite the fact that I recorded everything on tape and cassette in the 70's (nobody spoke of piracy then) I HAD to own the original vinyls later on, ending up in a collection of over 500.
Downloading songs today is nothing different.
Ppl get addicted to the music if they hear it often enough. They WILL want to hold their own hard copy in their hands eventually and I believe that there are still a considerable amount of music lovers around who prefer uncompressed audio quality... like me.

[biggeorge]

The QTrax site is hosted on a Commodore Plus-4 server in Antarctica on a 2400 baud dialup connection.
PUSH PLAY ON TAPE
Loading.
Ready.
_

I wonder how long it'll be before we see QTrax to MP3 file header stripping software. hehehe

[tagg]

So whats the story is this up and running as by the look of the site there is no way of downloading the their software ??

Tagg

[big mick000]

DAMN YOU MAC OS X!!!!!

[aaptaapt]

So whats the story is this up and running as by the look of the site there is no way of downloading the their software ??

Tagg

Download it from here

[MrElectricity]

Thanks guys my kids are very excited about this one.

[tagg]

Thanks aaptaapt

Tagg

[Decapper]

I think not being able to play in player of choice is going to be a problem

[soap]

i already have all the music i can get my hands on with a free rhapsody account.

[admin]

MUSIC-SHARING application Qtrax has launched one day late with a glitch that prevents users from downloading music.

Earlier this week Qtrax grabbed international attention by claiming it would launch a free, advertising-funded music download service with the blessing of major labels EMI, Warner Music, Sony BMG and Universal.

The launch was expected at 12am (4pm AEST) on Monday but was unexpectedly delayed after all major labels denied signing any agreements with Qtrax.

Qtrax Beta for PC has finally launched today, 24 hours late and with little fanfare. The official website merely activated a "download" button and released a short statement.

"We're thrilled with the massive response we've received," Qtrax said.
Related stories

* Qtrax: Labels deny free song download deal

* Last.fm: Major labels agree to free music streaming

* Downloads: Legal music sales plunge

"To ensure the best user experience, we're activating accounts in stages."

It does not specify how long users should wait until they can sign up, or when these issues will be fixed. Download links for music tracks only return a "coming soon" message.

Users cannot download any tracks from the service until their account is activated. Both the account sign-up page and email confirmation service are massively delayed.

Qtrax Beta is merely a branded, or "skinned", version of Mozilla's open-source Songbird software which is similar to Apple's iTunes music player. Both applications combine regular jukebox and library features with web-based music search functions.

Qtrax currently appears to have only disc-copying and playback functions plus limited artist-related information.

Major-label artists such as the Foo Fighters and Alicia Keys are being promoted on the homepage and advertising is also being displayed within the application. Artist searches return a blank screen.

There has been no confirmation from the “big four” record labels if they have signed any agreements with Qtrax.

The company had claimed it would have up to 30 million tracks available upon launch. There are currently over 9 million tracks listed on the network, none of which can apparently be downloaded.

Within hours of launch the number of Qtrax users online had passed 8000, not quite reflecting the “massive response” claimed by the company.

[best4less]

Very nice first impression ran the program in Vista
and it crashed lol
And like you said do a search and you get no hits
I hate it when they release a new idea and
don't make sure it works first

[Globe]

I downloaded Qtrax and set it up, here are my thoughts: (using Windows XP and AMD 2600+ 1GB Ram)

1) I can't download anything yet.

2) With about 8000 users online at the time I was using Qtrax, it seemed as slooooooow as trying to run photoshop on a Pentium 2.

3) Searching returned hits for me, I tried Daft Punk and Foo Fighters, heaps of results but double clicking to download got me a message about no downloads available yet.

4) Wav and mp3 files played ok in the player, player doesn't seem to have much functionality. i.e. I couldn't seek a particular part of the song.


5) My adblock software seemed to be working, the banner ad at the top was white space only. i.e. blank.

Heaps of work left to go on this downloading application, I will keep trying and report back in this thread.


Edit: Looks like right now their server is down, 404 not found errors and an Oracle setup page displaying inside the Songbird application. Not a good start Qtrax.


Globe