QTrax has announced that it is part of a legal peer-to-peer music service that is being offered. Qtrax is a new advertising-supported service that lets you download music from two of the four major labels, Universal and EMI as well as several smaller labels. Qtrax, a digital service which offers a catalogue of 25 million songs to download for free. Some music will be available through P2P connections while music from Universal and EMI will be hosted on Qtrax servers. Qtrax files also contain Digital Rights Management software, which allow music companies to track how many times their songs have been downloaded and played. And, It is only with  the Qtrax media player the files can be played as the files use Windows Media digital rights management. However, the Qtrax software acquires a valid license key to play the songs. Unfortunately, you cannot transfer songs to a portable media device like an iPod. That makes sense, since Qtrax makes money by showing ads while you search for and listen to music. There’s no particularly good way to do that on a mobile device. The Qtrax client is Windows only for now, but a Mac version is in the works.

[via Silicon Alley Insider]

Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 12:17 pm | by Kur-nia-one |