Still No Free Downloads from Qtrax?
March 3rd, 2008 by TimUnless you haven’t already heard, the music industry is, after many many years starting to come to terms with the fact that internet users are simply not going to stop illegally downloading music off the internet.
The answer to this little dilema is a website called Qtrax. It seems the only way to get around illegal free downloading is legal free downloading, you can actually download music for free form Qtrax without the FBI smashing through your windows at 5AM.
The way Qtrax achieves this amazing feat is by making big companies pay top dollar for advertising space, so hopefully after you’ve downloaded your tunes you’ll walk straight into McDonalds or whatever company filled your head with ideas and repay the dept.
This Utopian dream was due to be realised a couple of weeks ago, however ‘due to overwhelming response from music lovers worldwide’ it doesn’t work… yet. One can only assume that in a dank warehouse somewhere in a low rent country a huge bank of servers spontaneously set on fire as the entire world tried to download Wham Rap at precisely the same time.
Also Qtrax doesn’t actually have the rights to a large amount of the artists they claimed to have at the launch. So legal free downloading hasn’t quite arrived yet, but we are assured it will be here soon.
Qtrax is built around the excellent open source music blog reader / media player / iTunes copy called Songbird. However they have taken this already developed package and thrown in a few banner adverts. The more cynical internet user might think that this whole free music malarky is a sinister plot to get you to use this adulterated Songbird as your media player so that they can force feed adverts.
Related Blogs
Music labels say no deal with Qtrax (Reuters)
Is Qtrax the Future of Digital Music?
Qtrax Update: “Free and unlimited downloads in the very near future”
qtrax free and legal music downloads
Qtrax (beta) to bring free, legal & unlimited music downloads!
QTrax, Borderline Malware
Posted in music news | 
2 Comments »
March 4th, 2008 at 1:53 am
I just published an update on my site, TheMusic.FM, which is the third “related blog” above.
TVT Records will be the first label to offer MP3s through Qtrax. EMI Music Publishing has a deal, too, but we don’t have any details yet on when the music they own will be available and whether it will be their full catalog.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
[...] optiondragon wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptUnless you haven’t already heard, the music industry is, after many many years starting to come to terms with the fact that internet users are simply not going to stop illegally downloading music off the internet. … [...]