Rich Fiscus
27 Jan 2008 2:35
A new free music download service is getting ready to launch. A P2P-based service called Qtrax is supposed to be going live today, offering 100% ad-supported music downloads, and apparently a selection of over 25 million songs. A Mac OS X beta is supposed to be coming in March. Although at least one website is reporting that the service was to go live at 12 AM today, there doesn't appear to be a download link available as of two hours later.
Last year marked the launch of SpiralFrog, the first free music to work closely with the major record labels, which occured several months after the firing of original CEO Robin Kent. Undeterred, Kent started an advertising firm with fellow SpiralFrog veteran Lance Ford. That company, called Rebel Digital is now responsible for selling the ads necessary to fund Qtrax.
The similarities to SpiralFrog don't end there either. Like that service, Qtrax will be paying royalties based on how often each downloaded song is played. Also like SpiralFrog, that begs the question of how such a service can manage to exist in the long term, with recurring expenses for a single download, regardles of how much ad revenue that download might include.
One area where Qtrax certainly distinguishes themselves from SpiralFrog is their selection of music, where they appear to have better than a 20:1 advantage. They have deals with all four major labels - Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Group.
Of course, with DRM comes the usual concerns about whether the songs will be playable on portable music players. As usual, there's at least one platform that isn't supported, and that's the iPod. While many of Apple's loyal customers will no doubt blast Qtrax over this, it's Apple's choice not to support any DRM other than their own or license FairPlay to third parties.
Although at least one court (in France) has previously ruled that online music wasn't a big enough industry to count as an "essential serice," which would require Apple to allow other companies to license FairPlay, it would be curious to see if the same ruling would result after another 2+ years of declining CD sales and the booming online music industry.
Today's launch was scheduled to coincide with a press conference to be held at the Midem music industry conference, being held in France.
Correction: According to the Associated Press, the version for the Mac and iPod support will go hand in hand.
"We've had a technical breakthrough which enables us to put songs on an iPod without any interference from FairPlay," said Allan Klepfisz, Qtrax's president and chief executive.
He also mentioned that "Apple has nothing to do with it."