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EMI Launches Advertising-Supported P2P Service
SirClicksalot writes to tell us that EMI is launching the first ad-supported peer-to-peer music downloading service called Qtrax. With Qtrax users will have two tiers of membership available to them, which EMI hopes will draw in a large segment of users to try it out and graduate many of them to stay on with a monthly fee or purchase music permanently. From the article "In the ad-supported, free tier, users will be able to search the network for specific tracks, and those tracks registered with Qtrax will be made available for download in Qtrax's proprietary ".mpq" file format. Users will then be able to play the downloaded .mpq file in full-fidelity sound quality for a pre-defined number of times. Each time a consumer plays a track, the Qtrax player will also offer fans click-to-buy purchase options, as well as the opportunity to upgrade to a premium subscription service for a flat monthly fee."
Like Magnatune? ;)
Sorry to bang on about it and okay, I know the selection isn't the best but it's not bad at all. You can try entire albums before you buy, download in whatever format (MP3, OGG, WAV, Flac, etc), albums costs $6.00 each (you can pay more if you want), it doesn't need any proprietary player, the downloads work with any MP3 player.
Oh and you can give 3 copies of your download to friends legally. And the help is way better than anything else out there for music.
And yes, I do use it. In fact, it's the only place I get music these days because I'm tired of being treated like a potential criminal ("pirate") and paying for the privilege.
bang goes my karma... again...
I'm not sure but I would wager that the "Premium" tier service for Qtrax operates in much the same way as iTunes
From the article itself:
"The premium subscription service tier uses Microsoft's Janus DRM technology, which allows consumers to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music in the Qtrax network. Subscribers will also have the ability to transfer content to Windows Media enabled portable devices for as long as the subscription stays active."
In other words: only supported by Windows Media portable players or Window itself, only plays as long as you pay your monthly fee, non-transferable to different formats.
As in, worse than iTunes.
Nothing to see here folks - just another showpiece online music store from the music industry so that they can show how "pirates are hurting even sales of music in digital format" while they lobby for wider copyright protection, mandatory DRM on everything and tougher penalties for non-commercial copyrigh infringement.
Always chack for the CDDA logo when buying CDs, as if they follow the CDDA standard it won't b0rk up when playing on older players or your PC. Also disable autorun, unless you like their crap hidden in your PC.
h2g2bob