Gizmodo
We have long thought the acronym P2P was the very antonym of the word legal, but Qtrax, a new P2P music sharing service, has plans to rewrite the geek dictionary. Here's the skinny: The service is free, completely. Qtrax offers an unlimited service. It is supported by the four major labels, as well as smaller, niche music groups, and that means it will have a start-up music library of over 25 million songs. That is about four times bigger than iTunes, and about 100% cheaper. We know what you are thinking; is this all smoke without fire? Short answer; we're not sure, but Qtrax is hitting soon. Very, very soon.
Monday, in fact, is the day the service goes live, and we cannot hold our wee we're so excited. Initially, only Windows Vista and XP will be supported, but the Macboys and girls see some action on March 18th.
The system will work by tracking all downloads, royalties will then be issued accordingly. It isn't too clear how that revenue will be generated, but expect some anal advertising to bombard a PC near you if you do give it a whirl. Still, we can't help our cynical judgement chiming in—how did Noah get two of every species on a wooden boat? He didn't—do you know what I mean? Nevertheless, we wait and hope for a legal, free, P2P music service, but we think eternal world peace is a little more likely by Monday. [Boy Genius Reports]
Comments
this better NOT be US only!!!
Too good to be true. Maybe it's going to be like Joost with ads embedded, like in the middle of a song.
@thistle.john: That's why we have proxy and tunneling. ;)
Sweet! If it's all true..
I'm happy illegally downloading my music.
This smells like the biggest pile of adware since Gator.
25 Million songs? Bring it on :F
Monday is my birthday! "and we cannot hold our wee we're so excited." they have these adult diapers...
If they're not revealing the system right now, it means they have things they want to hide about it, which might hinder building up the hype. Obviously there's going to be a catch the size of Moby Dick, so I'm not getting my hopes up.
From watching the videos and such, it seems relatively obvious that these songs will not be available for transfer. My guess is a very heavy DRM system will hinder this from actually doing anything diferent.
Here's to hoping, though.
to be technical...
free is in fact infinatly cheaper than a buck....
just being an ass
~CR
Well you can all expect your favorite indie artists to start selling out soon, so they can actually pull in some income so they can tour, and go into a studio and record another album. Expect to hear Cat Power on a baby formula commercial, and the like.
what about porno vids? any mention of free porn dls?
@dead_red_eyes: Let them make some money. Must we keep all artists poor. Geez. It's not like indie hasn't sold out all over the place anyhow. As long as they keep making good music.
Just so nobody else gets it wrong it the worlds first legal p2p MUSIC network. BBC iPlayer and several other programs also use a legal p2p network.
</rant>
Who wants to bet the music won't play on an iPod?
My guess: This is legal P2P distribution. Distribution only that is. Once you get the track, until that track is activated in some way, it wont play. What do I get if I'm right?
My guess is, it goin to be a service where you download the music but it will only play in a player provided by them that will display adds. if am right, this is dead in the water already cause i can just stream anything without taking up disk space from youtube if i just want to listen to something that i can't carry around with me on my MP3 player. and i doubt it will play nice with a zune or and ipod why??? because it will kill the zune market place and also hurt itunes. my opinion is, these record labels are digging there grave deeper and deeper with these dum ass ideas, Heck my apple TV will play me any music video from youtube instantly, Free with not a single add, sure picture quality varies but sometimes i get suprise how good some of the videos look on my tv
They seem to be claiming it's all firefox based. There is bound to be some transparency with the code, and a few people can browse it over to see if it has any tricks up its sleeve. Little Snitch is also useful for find any outbound traffic after install. I'll bite and investigate once the Mac client hits on March 18th.
Perhaps the files are really low quality, thus encouraging users to upgrade once they have had a taste of a particular track. It would make sense to try to engage those who are downloading illegally one way or another...
Wha? im confused here...
@dead_red_eyes:
You already do hear Cat Power on TV commercials. Can't remember the specific one at the moment. But any band would gladly 'sell-out.' Nothing wrong with making money for what they love to do.
This will probably work like Ruckus does for colleges. Free legal downloads of tons of songs, but it's DRM packed, and there's tons of ads.
@thechansen: If it's firefox based, they can't hide any of their code. It has to be open source.
@dead_red_eyes: Id much rather have Cat Power (or Fiest) than say... Beyonce
If you checkout the NY Times article it mentions that you will not be able to hear the songs free forever "Listeners will be able to hear songs a certain number of times - probably five in the case of most major label acts." [www.nytimes.com]
This is similar to the last.fm deal where there is a three listen limit. A lot of press are neglecting to mention this.
on the news today they said it will be able to work on mp3's, phones etc. but not able to go on ipods until the mac version comes out. theres alotof privacy issues though, they gunna be taking loads of information about us to giv to the record companies. im gunna download it, see what its like, looking at a preview it seems there is only a bar at the top for advertising. im feeling confident about it :D
I think this idea has some potential, ad-supported or otherwise. Why everyone feels that they *need* to carry arround their entire music collection (or transfer these free songs at all) is beyond me. It would make much more sense (in my view) to carry around a small internet compatible player that's got Wi-Fi to just listen to whatever tracks you need when you want to.
Calling bullshit on this. Part of what made P2P great was not just the offerings by "labels" but by fan remixes, edits, and obscure tracks that were on now defunct labels where there isn't anyone to call to secure "rights". By limiting what people can put on a P2P service you neuter the very thing that sets it apart from other music services (aside from the whole "price" issue). Some of the best tracks I found on Audiogalaxy back in the day were things that were NEVER on a CD issued by a major label. They were either vinyl classics never reissued or obscure tracks of one sort or another. So if you're into the mainstream pap that the major labels like to shove down people's throats you now have one more outlet for that crap. Me... I'll be rocking torrents until the death.
i'm calling wait and see until tomorrow after i download the service to clarify these couple of points:
1. IPOD - it's easy to say - no ipod and the service stinks, but who needs ipod compatibility really? most of the time i listen to songs on my computer and never even transfer them to my iPod. not everyone uses an ipod anyway. i'm curious to see how the qtrax library works.
2. FREE AND LEGAL - the songs are totally free. i can't underestimate how great this is. free = free. AND it's legal. well that's pretty damn good. a lot better than .99 cents a song. .99 cents better in fact.
3. ORGANIZED AND SEARCHABLE - qtrax seems completely organized so that it will be easy to find songs unlike on any of the other P2P services. from what i've read it's sort of like itunes + limewire.
4. RARE AND OBSCURE SONGS - since it searches the p2p networks i think there's a chance it will find all the remixes, demos, live songs, mashups, and more. how else can they have 25 million songs? it will be most interesting to see how this all works. i think if they can offer these obscure songs this feature alone will be what makes or breaks this service. i am most interested to see if i can get the really obscure tracks like i used to get on napster.
5. QUICK DOWNLOADS - they are saying no adware, no spyware. if that's true and it's a quick download on the songs that could be just what the doctor ordered. i do wonder how long the songs take to download. if it's 90 seconds like spiralfrog forget it. but if it's quick like itunes that would be a lot better than limewire where 1/2 the time i can't find the songs i am looking for anyway and songs can take 20 minutes to download with searching for other sources and waiting in interminable queues.
[blog.wired.com]
Well, this story makes this sound a little more promising that I originally thought. I'm surprised to say, I'm looking forward to how it'll look come Monday. In the mean time, the fact that
[qtrax.com]
is currently unreachable makes me question their readiness ;-)
My bet is that the songs will evaporate after the trial period. The labels will then evaluate, either decide it's not worth it (most likely) or worth it and use it as leverage with other distributors like Apple.
Either way, you'd then have to re-download stuff. And there's nothing keeping them from changing the DRM rules at will.
Actually it's "approaching infinity percent cheaper"
Funny, it doesn't support Mac yet, but the browser of choice in their QTRAX Demo Video is Safari.
BY LAFOND66 AT 01/26/08 02:47 PM
@thechansen: If it's firefox based, they can't hide any of their code. It has to be open source.
Wrong its based on Mozilla XULRunner like Joost and Joost is full of DRM and proprietary code ,they only have to show code they modify in the XULRunner codebase not all their code .
@Joseph:
No, iTunes is approaching infinity percent more expensive than Qtrax. Qtrax is exactly 100% cheaper than iTunes (or anything else that charges any price greater than zero).
My only question: If you can download the MP3, and everyone else can download the MP3, what would be the big fucking deal if you put it on a portable music device? Seriously, DRM is the only thing that may kill this deal. But I see a great second use for this thing: parties. Set up a shitty computer to a stereo and everyone can download tracks and add it to a playlist. Even if it's crazy DRM you don't need to move the music off the 'puter to put on a fuckin', rocking, 80s dance party. I see this as a great thing for Bar Mitzvah DJs too, you know the guys that have the laptop and just hit play.
So, it's midnight EST on 01/28/2008 and the qtrax website doesn't allow for downloads. Nice going qtrax!!!
Yes free and legal, can download without paying, and the artist gets paid. This is so totally logical, it can't fail. Wow free so there's no money, and they all get paid. I couldn't imagine in a million years there's going to be some catch to it....
IT'S MONDAY! WHERE THE HELL IS IT!?!?! Site says it'll be available "Midnight EST". What day!?
It's up and running now, but slow thanks to a Drudge Report link to a story about it. So far, it seems pretty impressive.
Yes, there are free and legal services. They are all either ad-supported or have a REAL catch like Ruckus (available to college students until they graduate, then Ruckus socks them with a hefty monthly fee). I personally use Spiralfrog. It's ad-supported, but at least you know what you're getting.
So what's the catch with Qtrax? There's no music. Just a big, empty network.
[www.latimes.com],1,6460500.story
Turns out, no labels are supporting Qtrax despite Qtrax's claims. Good luck with this service. Share prices have dropped to almost half. Like hell the big companies will invest in this service.
hey im here and its monday the 18th of march where is the music this site is a fake
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