Qtrax
 

Any thoughts on Qtrax?

Interesting. I'll have to look into this. I hadn't heard about it before.

EDIT: Not available until midnight tonite!

Looks like they may not actually have all their ducks lined up: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080128/...ading_music_11

It is always bad when the PR arm and reality are on different pages :eek:

Reading the page of their CEO sets off my BS alarm:

http://www.ltdnetwork.com/team.asp

Company: We have music from all the major labels

All the major labels: No, you don't

Oops.

I'll be interested in Apple's response to "our songs can play on iPods, even though they are not unrestricted and don't use Apple's DRM".

Companies that make claims like that are not around for long. They claim to have received $35m in funding, and spent $1m of it last night in Cannes launching the service they don't yet have.

I just installed their application.

Their installer is actually just Mozilla Songbird with their own little plugin. Everything you do in the plugin brings you to a 404 page or even an Oracle server error page.

Little faith in this product.

If you're happy with streaming on your PC rather than using a portable player, Imeem, Last.fm, and (though more of a radio sort of thing rather than track-on-demand) Pandora are absolutely worth trying (and free!)

If you don't mind spending a bit of dough each month ($7-$15), I highly recommend Yahoo! Unlimited Music and Rhapsody, though I get the feeling that the former is slated to be reborn as something very different later this year.

As others have said... qtrax... fishy, not really worth anyone's time or trust right now (or IMHO for the foreseeable future).

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/28/d....ap/index.html

CANNES, France (AP) -- A distributor of Internet file-swapping software has abruptly postponed the launch of its free online music service until it can finalize music licensing deals.


Qtrax says it will offer more than 25,000,000 songs available for free.

Qtrax omitted that detail when it threw a star-studded coming-out party over the weekend.

The ambitious, ad-supported music service promised unlimited music downloads with the blessing of the major recording companies.

But that claim began to unravel just hours before Qtrax's scheduled debut Monday when Warner Music Group issued a statement that it had not authorized the firm to distribute its artists' music.

Universal Music Group and EMI Group PLC later confirmed they did not have licensing deals in place with Qtrax, noting discussions were still ongoing. A call to Sony BMG Music Entertainment was not immediately returned.