Music Industry Shocker: 25 Million Free and Legal Songs

Posted on 01.28.08 in Music and there are 9 comments.

Update: Looks like there’s a snag. Read this.
(ht: Euphrony)

Wow. I admit I didn’t see this coming so soon…

With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks.

The service has been endorsed by the very same record companies - including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music – that have chased file-sharers through the courts in a doomed attempt to prevent piracy.

Read the rest here.

Just to give you a reference, QTRAX’s reported catalog of 25 million songs is five times that of Apple’s iTunes.

What do you think? Will you use it? Do you think it will affect artists positively or negatively?

(ht: Mark Lee)

The Comments:

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I will definitely use it once it’s compatible with iTunes.  I’m all about free music.  As to how it will affect artists, I really have no idea.

Not so fast!

New York-based Warner Music undermined that claim, declaring in a statement that it “has not authorized the use of our content on Qtrax’s recently announced service.”

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.

Sounds like someone let the marketing team run amok, making promises they probably cannot keep.

Although I might not use Qtrax (because of DRM limitations) I would utilize a similar service.  I believe that the long-term affect will at the very worst be neutral for artists.  In general, the garden variety artist isn’t going to get rich under the established system.  The record companies must now figure out how to maximize profit in a manner that is more palatable to the consumer (i.e. by not charging $20 for a CD).  This shift will happen, as it has from time to time since the time of Enrico Caruso.

I can’t get the links to work.

ryanb,

Hmmm...they seem to work for me.

Anyone else having issues?

The TimesOnline link stopped working for a little while, but they seem to have fixed it on their end now.

This sounds a lot like Ruckus. Ruckus is free & legal music downloads, funded by advertising, with some DRM restrictions (no CD burning, you can put it on your mp3 player for a fee, no iPods).
The different, I guess, is that Ruckus is only for people with .edu e-mail addresses (I think your university has to have an account? maybe), and I don’t think their library is as big as 25 million songs.
I think things like this can only be good for the music industry. I am more likely to listen to artists I would not have heard otherwise, because I can download entire albums at once. Literally, almost any time I hear about an artist whom I might have the slightest chance of enjoying, I go download some music. It allows artists to expand their audience and removes a lot of the temptation (at least for me) to try other illegal means of hearing music for free.

I had access to Ruckus when I was a grad student, and I was underwhelmed. The selection wasn’t great, and to access some content you had to be on campus. Plus, I have an iPod, so not being able to put any of the music on there limited my use of the program. 

It sounds like Qtrax is acting rather irresponsibly at the moment.  It would be great if a program like that could get off the ground.

Not so fast.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article3267255.ece

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