|
The Los Angeles Times report...
Ad-supported Qtrax gains access to the companies' tens of millions of songs although for now, portable devices aren't included in the mix.
By Joseph Menn - Los Angeles Times - 27 January 2008
Battling the twin demons of plummeting sales and rampant piracy, the four major record companies moved closer Sunday to allowing music lovers to listen to any tune, free of charge.
The companies agreed to license their digital catalogs to a new service that exploits online music bandits for commercial purposes. QTrax, as the Web service is called, legitimizes the peer-to-peer networks that accelerated music piracy in the 1990s by allowing computer users to share their music files online.
The novel service scours pirate networks for songs, then delivers them as downloads to the computers of fans willing to have ads play while they listen.
Executives behind Qtrax said the service would provide tens of millions of songs -- far more than are available on Apple Inc.'s iTunes, the top legal download site.
As with other ad-supported services, Qtrax has drawbacks, and it is currently available only in a test version that might not work as well as established sites.
But its launch at a music industry event in France over the weekend shows how the labels are increasingly willing to try new ways to recapture the money lost to Internet piracy. After years of negotiations, the site won permission to sell music from music publishers and the four labels: Universal Music Group, owned by Vivendi; Sony BMG Music Entertainment; Warner Music Group; and EMI Group.
Many industry executives worry that ad-supported services will "accelerate a race to the bottom," as one label veteran who negotiated with Qtrax said. "The counter argument is that music is already free." ...
Because consumers have rejected most other song downloads that come with software that restricts how often or where they can be played, the major labels finally moved last year to sell songs in the unencumbered MP3 format through Amazon.com and other services. They also have allowed such companies as Imeem Inc., which operates a social networking site, to let people listen to more songs for free while watching ads.
Most users want to own songs, though. Sales from legal downloads rose 40% last year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said last week.
But pirated tracks are still downloaded 20 times as often, the trade group said, and an estimated 100 million people are on illegal file-sharing networks at any time...
Qtrax has licensed technology that assigns audio fingerprints to known recordings, ensuring that users actually get the song they are searching for, instead of a fragment or a "spoof" deliberately distributed by labels to discourage piracy. Qtrax compares the sounds on pirated tracks with its catalog of fingerprints, delivering only the right version. The labels and others then get a percentage of the revenue from the ads that show while that track plays.
On the user's computer, the service resembles a modified version of the Firefox Web browser. The player is based on Songbird, a piece of free media software that is still under development by digital music pioneer Rob Lord and hundreds of contributors.
Although the downloads reside on the users' computers, they do have some rights restrictions. At least initially, users can't listen to the songs without the player filling the screen and showing ads. They will be able to use the Internet simultaneously only in a window within the player.
The audio will be delivered, along with photos, biographical information about the artist, album cover art and links to Amazon for purchases of CDs or unrestricted MP3s and to Ticketmaster for concert information and ticket sales.
"We're giving away the music, not the profits," Klepfisz said. "Sites have not done a good job of making themselves a one-stop shop. It is said that people don't spend money on music, but they are more than willing to spend $100 million on merchandise," he added, citing annual industry figures.
For now, the music downloaded using Qtrax can't be moved to portable devices. Within weeks, Chief Technology Officer Chris Roe said, tracks will be allowed to move to some devices that are compatible with Microsoft Corp. rights-management software. That currently excludes Apple hardware.
The labels insisted on the restrictions even though they need a large number of users to earn money from the ad-sharing agreement with Qtrax beyond some early guaranteed minimum payments.
The labels' reluctance to let their music be unrestricted has hobbled other ad-supported services, label executives and analysts said.
"Free is nice: That's certainly going to be a big come-on," industry analyst Mike McGuire of Gartner Inc. said. "But they need to make it workable and seamless for the consumer."
|
Forums 
