Home › DMW Daily › April 13, 2009

Qtrax Launches Free, Ad-Supported Music Download Service

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 13, 2009 - 12:49pm.
New York - Qtrax on Monday launched its free, ad-supported music download service, after securing licensing agreements with all four major labels and the major music publishers.

The service utilizes a downloadable media player to play the free downloads, which come wrapped in digital rights management (DRM), and currently cannot be played on non-Windows computers or portable players -- including Apple's iPod.

Qtrax fumbled its initial launch in early 2008, announcing at a major music conference in France that it had secured licenses from all the major labels, when in fact those agreements had not yet been finalized.

The company eventually secured deals with Universal in October of 2008, with Sony BMG in December, and with Warner Music in February of this year.

The Qtrax launch comes shortly after the demise of SpiralFrog, a similar free, ad-supported music download service.

 

Related Links:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090409-716910.html

http://idolator.com/5206994/qtrax-more-frustrating-than-qbert

http://snipurl.com/ftztj (DMW previous coverage)

http://www.qtrax.com

Published in DMW Daily, April 13, 2009
tags: Advertising | Music | DRM | Qtrax |



Comments

It should be noted that

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on April 15, 2009 - 8:25am.
It should be noted that Qtrax will not work on about 99% of the portable devices you want to use. Try http://www.turnitupmedia.com for a better experience, and music you can put on any device.

I don't know, another ad

Submitted by Music Download Sites (not verified) on April 17, 2009 - 5:31am.
I don't know, another ad supported download site offering DRM tracks. Even iTunes took out their DRM restrictions on downloaded files not too long ago. People don't seem to want anything attahced to DRM anymore, plus it gets you into trouble when you want to use the file for practically anything as a lot of restrictions are tied to it. We'll wait and see how it pans out. At least it's another legal music site and not another file sharing one where the artist gets nothing.

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