[Infowarrior] - Download another 25 million songs - legally

[Richard Forno]

>From The Times
January 28, 2008
>From today, feel free to download another 25 million songs - legally
Zune
Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent, in Cannes

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/arti
cle3261591.ece

After a decade fighting to stop illegal file-sharing, the music industry
will give fans today what they have always wanted: an unlimited supply of
free and legal songs.

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. The gamble is that
fans will put up with a limited amount of advertising around the Qtrax
website¹s jukebox in return for authorised use of almost every song
available.

The service will use the ³peer-to-peer² network, which contains not just hit
songs but rarities and live tracks from the world¹s leading artists.

Nor is a lack of compatibility with the iPod player expected to put fans
off. Apple is unlikely to allow tracks downloaded from its rival to be
compatible with iPods, but, while the iPod is the most popular music player,
it has not succeeded in dominating the market: sales of the iPod account for
50 million out of 130 million total digital player sales. Qtrax has also
spoken of an ³iPod solution², to be announced in April.

Qtrax files contain Digital Rights Management software, allowing the company
to see how many times a song has been downloaded and played. Artists, record
companies and publishers will be paid in proportion to the popularity of
their music, while also taking a cut of advertising revenues.

The Qtrax team, which spent five years working on the system, promised a
³game-changing² intervention in the declining recorded music market when the
service was presented at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes.

The singer James Blunt gave Qtrax a cautious welcome. ³I¹m amazed that we
now accept that people steal music,² he said. ³I was taught not to steal
sweets from a sweet shop. But I want to learn how this service works, given
the condition the music industry is in.²

Qtrax, a subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Corporation, has raised $30
million (£15 million) to set up the service, which is available in the US
and Europe from today. Allan Klepfisz, president of Qtrax, said: ³Customers
now expect music to be free but they do not want to use illegal sites. We
believe this . . . has the support of the music industry and allows artists
to get paid.²

Ford, McDonald¹s and Microsoft are among the advertisers signed up to
support what is thought to be the world¹s largest legal music store. The
service says that adverts will be nonintrusive and will not appear each time
a song is played. As with iTunes, customers will have to download Qtrax
software. They will own the songs permanently but will be encouraged to
³dock² their player with the store every 30 days so it can gather
information on which songs have been played.

Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of Vivendi Universal, said the crisis in
the music industry had been overstated despite EMI¹s radical cost-cutting.
He said: ³Look at Universal ­ we have double-digit profit margins. But we
would like strong competition from the other major record companies to help
the industry grow.² Universal has poached the Rolling Stones from EMI and Mr
Levy said that others could follow as thousands of staff and artists are
made redundant.

On the appearance of Qtrax, Mr Levy gave warning that the lack of
compatibility between competing digital music players was as big a problem
as file-sharing. And Paul McGuinness, the manager of U2, said that the sound
quality of MP3 downloads was becoming an issue for bands and fans. ³There is
a growing consumer revolt against online audio quality,² he said.