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QTrax announcement 'premature'
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 29th January 2008
QTrax: a joke in poor taste, or is there still hope for the all-you-can-eat service?
As I reported yesterday, the company issued a press release claiming that they had signed deals with the 'big four' of the music industry and were forging ahead with a plan to wrap DRM technology from Microsoft around music snagged from the popular Gnutella P2P service. This seems to have been... premature, to put it kindly.
Many of you commented on the original report as the news slowly broke across the 'net that first one and then another of the big four denied any such deal with QTrax. By the end of the day it was clear that QTrax had, in fact, failed to sign a single label to its brave new service.
Forum user Quack was the first to point out that, contrary to QTrax's announcement, the vast majority of publishers had quickly distanced themselves from QTrax following the soft-launch on Sunday. User legoman666 put the final nail in the coffin with a link to an Ars Technica article announcing the final major publisher denying any affiliation with QTrax.
So, what does the future hold for the service? At first glance it seemed to be an olive branch bringing together the profit-hungry music industry and the freeloading P2P downloaders, but it seems that it will remain a dream for now.
Although the company finally managed to start shipping the software late last night - quite some way away from the original launch deadline - it seems that the download client doesn't yet live up to its name, with an error message popping up should you attempt to download a song via the service. Which makes it all a bit pointless, really.
One thing's for certain, though: the company won't have done itself any favours with the big four by claiming support it just doesn't have.
Disappointed that QTrax fell at the first hurdle – less than 24 hours after we first reported on it – or were you expecting nothing less? Let us know over in the forums.
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Comments (8)
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:)
Sam
tbh, why would you bother downloading free music with DRM added when you can have free music without, just as easily if not more, and without the restrictions of it not working on your portable audio device of choice?
That's exactly the problem though.
Until the 'big four' realise that we music lovers want to listen to the music on our own terms, on our own choice of player at a fair price, they're never gonna get anywhere in the fight against piracy.
if it sounds too good to be true....
So you legally download music and no one is going to hunt you down. Then, you have the option (depending on your moral stance) to remove the DRM in order to use the music on your portable player. At that point, no one will know, so who's to stop you?