Culture

Free and Legal Downloads!

by slenderdog | January 28, 2008 at 06:26 am

1136 views | 2 Recommendations | 3 comments

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 is the world’s first free and legal peer-to-peer (P2P) digital
music site. Music lovers can discover new music and legally download
full-length, high-quality versions of their favorite songs while
compensating both the artists and the record labels through
non-intrusive and relevant advertising. Qtrax has the unparalleled
support of the major record labels and all of their respective
publishing divisions. Qtrax and its components are developed by
LTDnetwork Inc. a division of Brilliant Technologies Corporation.

The good news--Qtrax is offering FREE music downloads with the agreement of the major record labels, who are finally waking up to the reality of internet music distribution--their revenue source will be advertising.

The bad news--these free downloads are not compatible with iPod. And it appears that there will be DRM and restrictions on the number of times a track can be played:

If listeners like what they hear, they will be able to purchase those songs, much as they can on iTunes...

At first, Qtrax will have a revenue-sharing arrangement with labels. Eventually, though, it will have to pay the labels a royalty for each time a user plays a song, which could cost quite a bit relative to ad sales.

“I’m a believer in advertising, which pays for an awful lot of media consumption in the U.S.,” said David Card, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. “But I have yet to see the model that makes me feel good they’ll get enough money out of advertising. The question is, can they get enough mass to lower the royalty?”

It appears the model is "free samples with ads and upsell." How could they sell you tracks that are yours to keep? No, they let you have them and then charge you for them.

How is that going to work when people can just go and download their music free elsewhere? The labels are, predictably, reluctant to give up their claim on the revenue, but they'll have to come up with some very clever approaches to make this model pay. If, perhaps, they sell merchandise and concert tickets through download sites they might be able to retain their relevance to the artists and fans and continue to exist. Free downloads have reminded us that businesses must offer something of value to continue to exist. The internet has created a new model of music distribution in which the old style record label is unnecessary. If the labels want to survive they should be doing sensible things like creating their own websites, offering free downloads and making money off the huge traffic they would generate--but they are stuck in the past. They seem to prefer clinging to their old model and watching their sales volume fall. Only slowly are they realizing that the party's over.

There will always be some market for CDs and even vinyl--but the labels' stranglehold is over. They'd best get what share of the download market and its revenue bearing traffic while they can.

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Brian A Kennedy

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 07:42 on January 28th, 2008

Yeah, this is causing quite a splash -- even made the front page of Drudge this am. I wonder if the lack of itunes compatibility will hurt them more than they're assuming, though...

Rob Walker

at 08:05 on January 28th, 2008

It's interesting how first all these sites (like pandora.com and last.fm) came out of the woodwork to provide free music. Then they were sued/shut down/closed for whatever reason...and now they're back, fully enorsed and providing free music again.

So where are all these lost sales from downloads again?

Thanks for posting this!

Jarrett Martineau

at 09:01 on January 28th, 2008

Thanks for this, slenderdog. It's an interesting story and I wonder how it will play out. The promise of free, unlimited, *legal* downloads is an attractive prospect to consumers, but the reality of making it happen is complex and problem-filled, and no one seems to have solved it yet.

(One quick admin note: your headline made me think this was spam. I would recommend working on a more descriptive/illustrative headline in order to capture the jist of the full story you've highlighted. Thanks!)