Labels back away from Qtrax

[Woodstock]

THREE of the "big four" record labels have reportedly denied signing any deals with free music download service Qtrax.

Qtrax had promised up to 30 million free and legal music tracks for download after claiming it had signed landmark deals with the four major record labels Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI and Universal.

The company's promise sounded too good to be true – an advertising-funded service that had no hidden software, limited copy-protection that let you listen to tracks on any computer or mp3 player, and a massive library of songs from the major labels.

Now Warner Music has issued a statement denying that it authorised any of its content for use on the Qtrax network.

EMI and Universal also denied a licensing deal with Qtrax despite being in discussions with the company. Sony could not be reached for comment.

Qtrax president Allan Klepfisz told AP that Warner was expected to agree to terms "shortly". He claimed that all other parties had agreed to the terms but some deals were yet to be formally signed.

Qtrax is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network that originally launched in 2002 following the collapse of Napster. It shut down a few months later to avoid legal action.

P2P users can share files, or portions of a file, directly with other users. The decentralised network structure makes it popular amongst illegal file-sharers due to its speed, efficiency and relative anonymity.

Legal music tracks are often crippled by digital rights management (DRM), a form of encoding intended to restrict how the file is used.

Qtrax offered to combine legal P2P networking with a more flexible form of DRM.

The Qtrax client was expected to launch at 12am EST (4pm AEST) today but the download appears to have been delayed.

It is not clear what content will be made available on the network.

[roguefan99]

I'm not overly suprised by this. I thought something was strange when they were saying they had all these big names onboard and at their launch they had LLCoolJ (sorry to the Ladies who Love Cool James!). If I read the article correctly all 4 big labels have pretty well stated they aren't onboard (funny how its always Sony that cant be contacted!).

I had concerns for it when I went to the site yesterday and it kept timing out.