Puddlegum

After years of taking peer-to-peer networks to court for music piracy, the major labels are now introducing Qtrax, their own P2P network. The Qtrax website boasts of over 25 million songs that can be downloaded for free, plus it’s legal. And for the first time, artists will be paid royalties for song plays, in a similar way they are paid for radio spins.

Feeling the jitters of this move, EMI, Warner, and Universal now claim they never gave permission to Qtrax to use their music, “saying they did not have licensing deals with Qtrax and discussions were continuing.” (This Is London)

The Qtrax website states: “Qtrax is NOT just another P2P network, it provides a complete system for finding and downloading music. The player provides access a web site filled with artist content, including Videos, Ringtones, Lyrics, Album Art, up to the minute artist news! Try finding THAT on any other P2P network. Even better – its FREE AND LEGAL on Qtrax.”

Qtrax files will not play on your iPod, though a solution is rumored to come in April. A beta version of Qtrax for Windows was to be made available today, January 28; a Mac version will be downloadable on March 18.

A plugin for iTunes will allow you to play Qtrax files outside of the Qtrax music player. “They will own the songs permanently but will be encouraged to ‘dock’ their player with the store every 30 days so it can gather information on which songs have been played.”

According to Times, “Qtrax files contain Digital Rights Management software, allowing the company to see how many times a song has been downloaded and played. Artists, record companies and publishers will be paid in proportion to the popularity of their music, while also taking a cut of advertising revenues.”

Since the Qtrax files are locked with DRM software, the industry will be able to track the files and control what you are able to do with your music. For example, users will not be able to burn music to CDs. While this move does signal a move towards music access, it shows that the industry will only do so if they retain control. Artists and record labels will benefit from this though, since they will be paid royalties for song plays.

The music industry hopes to make their money back through advertisements in the Qtrax player, embracing the free music model. Promising to not be intrusive with the advertisements, the first advertisers marketing on Qtrax will be Ford, Microsoft, and McDonalds.