Sunday, January 27, 2008

25,000,000 Songs - Free

From the London Times:

"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."

Get it here starting at 11pm tonight: Qtrax.com

Sadly, no Mac version until March, and no iPod compatibility until April.

3 comments:

Jason said...

I just downloaded the player. It won't let me download yet, so we will wait and see.

Anonymous said...

Qtrax was bluffing and haven't signed with any of the record labels. It was all media hype.

Spoon said...

I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt: that they were victims of the labels' cold feet. But what you suggest, Matt, seems probably more sinister and more likely. In any case, Qtrax hasn't proven itself to be anything other than a pile of crap.