A new Web site that promised free access to millions of songs from every record label is now offering none at all, after a bizarre series of events over the past two weeks.
It’s Qtrax, a mysterious company that emerged in early January, claiming to have reached agreement with all four major music industry consortiums to make their music available, legally and free of charge, by download, with ad revenue paying for it all.
The site was scheduled to go live Jan. 30- but that day, according to the British news agency Sky News, Warner Music denied that it had reached such a deal, and the other three music conglomerates soon followed suit.
After an announcement that things would be postponed for the short term, the site then spent the next few days periodically on and offline, but without any free music available either way.
The explanation, according to Sky News, appears to be that the company had reached distribution agreements with the music firms in the past, when it was testing a different, subscription-based model, but that that deal had never been expanded to include free, unlimited downloads.
Meanwhile, Qtrax’s parent company, Brilliant Technologies, sent out a press release Tuesday trumpeting that Qtrax “is currently the no. 2 Internet site in www.alexa.com’s Movers & Shakers with a reported increase of 15,000 percent in traffic.” Unmentioned in the release is that virtually none of those searching for the company’s core product- free music- actually found what they were looking for.
The Qtrax site’s homepage now includes a note informing customers that “due to overwhelming response from music lovers worldwide, we’ve experienced some technical issues.” It goes on to invite users to download the company’s media player and explore its web site- but only in playing their “existing music library,” as well as surf the Web. That’s right, no downloads- although the company promises it will begin “enabling free and unlimited downloads soon.”
Follow the continuing tribulations of QTrax on the company’s Web site, www.qtrax.com
What do you think is up with QTrax? Talk about it in the E-Gear forums.
So here’s the deal with the whole qtrax thing. If any and all of the people in the world of judgement would take a step back from thier fear based society they would know and understand that qtrax is in fact a possible revolution. And in any revolution there’s going to be those that thing that revolting will yeild nothing more than loud noise and lots of death. So they don’t. They don’t innovate, they don’t create they don’t make changes or solve probelms.
So for all of you writers out there who subscribe to the fear that has been instilled in the Music Labels by a current partner (a little adam and eve logo) That they are infringing upon their agreement to sell music in their online music store by giving it away for free. I say continue living in a world where we drive in cars that get 10-22 MPG, keep paying up the ass for health coverage that sucks trys to wiggle out of it’s coverage, and keep paying for music when we can get it for free!
@bdg911
You know, I think you might be right. Never looked at it from that point of view.
It was all a load of BS. It sounded too good to be true. Qtrax is right up there with the y2k bug.