Will QTrax’s Legal Peer-To-Peer System Inspire The World’s BitTerrorists To Go Legit?

noah | January 25, 2008 10:00 am
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Well, probably not. But it’s still worth noting that the long-in-the-works sanctioned P2P site QTrax–which has songs from all four major labels in its catalog–launched its beta site today, only three months after it was supposed to. QTrax is going to be another attempt at the “‘free’ music that makes you stare at advertising” model that’s recently been tested by the money-burning SpiralFrog, and judging by the company’s high placement on Google Trends this morning it would seem that at least a few people are interested in checking it out.

While heralding its easy installation process and ability to snag ringtones from its system, for some reason the QTrax marketing material doesn’t mention whether or not the downloadable tracks are copy-protected or set to expire after a certain number of plays. (A New York Times story in April hinted that many songs would “expire” after five plays, and attempts to listen to expired songs would result in users being directed to a purchase page.) I’d test this claim out myself, but–wait for it!–the Mac client won’t be ready until mid-March, which leads me to believe that the songs are copy-protected somehow. (SpiralFrog’s downloads, for example, expire after 30 days, and they too have the blessing of the major labels.) The QTrax powers that be wouldn’t be trying to snooker people into trying the site out and harvesting their e-mail addresses before getting a full feel for its “user experience,” would they?

QTrax [Official site]