QTrax Fact or Fiction

Midnight tonight, 25 million songs will be released upon the world, for freeish. According to press releases the RIAA is taking a step in the right direction and providing a new substitute for purchasing $.99 tracks or paying full price for a 'mainly' crappy CD. QTrax is a network of legal, free music downloads, but they do come with DRM attached. In addition, to listen to the songs you must use their player, obviously laced with some advertisement.

I think it's great under a few if's, which are as follows:

  • It's real, the jury is still out for me whether this is a media stunt, false 'legal' premise download site, or just a funny, funny ha ha move on Anon's part. ;)
  • There are no root kits installed, spyware, adware, or anything else I'm not aware of kickin around on my system. I don't want the player checking my hard drive for 'illegal' copies of music at the cost to listening to a few 'legal' copies.
  • Ads aren't popping up everywhere and changing my homepage, replacing cookies, or wearing down my system resources.
  • Speeds are good. Inventory doesn't mean a thing if it's not obtainable in a timely fashion, at least use half of my 10mb line.
  • It's not a trial then pay to play, been there done that. I don't want to have access to play all songs once and then pay a 'nominal' fee for every time there after.. Damn't FREE means FREE, otherwise I'll stick to my newsgroups.

Those items being said, I'm not against people making money for their product. I'm totally cool with some ads in a player, as long as the service is comparable to FREE. Hell, I'm not even upset about DRM, of course I don't own a portable media device, but the songs better be transferable to a CD.

I'll guess we'll see at midnight tonight if this is the real deal Holyfield or another ploy to get consumer private details by the likes of the RIAA.

January 28, 2008 · Filed Under P2P

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