QTrax = Almost Free Music

A new file-sharing service, QTrax, will be launching its pubic beta tonight at midnight for Windows XP and Vista. QTrax is a P2P network developed with the support of all 4 major labels, and looks to have over 25,000,000 at launch. All the tracks will be monetarily free, so they will not cost you a dime, and they are completely legal! Of course, there's a bit of a catch: the service is completely ad supported and DRM-ed

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for free music and am happy that the Big 4 are also embracing P2P technology, but I'm also a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the recording industry. The site promises that it will not have pop-ups or spy-ware installed onto your machine at all, but I find that a bit hard to believe as the artists that you download (read: the record labels) are paid on a per-play basis. And we also don't know yet what kind of advertising we are to expect, and whether or not we can transfer that music to our MP3 players. For some reason, I doubt that we will be able to, and I'm pretty sure we won't be able to burn CD's from that music.

There are a few cool features that are being touted. Well, ok, one cool feature. Its called "Last Night," and features live recordings from artists concerts from the previous evening. I'm personally a sucker for live recordings. Back in the Napster days, that's practically all I used P2P for because I owned all the music I wanted, but I love having the more-earnest live sessions around to listen to as well.

I suppose we'll have to wait until midnight tonight to find out what its all about and if its user-friendly enough to bother with. It excites me to see labels making the jump to the almost-free arena, but I have to stand back a little and wonder how consumer-friendly the application is going to be. Windows users can download the program tonight, and Mac users can download the program starting March 18.

Legal File-sharing Service touts free Music with Ads [I4U]