Qtrax: It's arrived! It's really arrived!

The New Statesman once ran a Weekend Competition for "final lines that ruin a play", with the winner being "enter Godot".

I think I know how that feels, as perpetual punchline QTrax has finally launched, and only four years behind schedule.

At the moment, it only works for PC Users, in a handful of countries, and despite having an extensive listing of tracks, it looks like it might only have downloads available from EMI.

If you search the help files, you'll discover this question:

How big is Qtrax's music catalog?

A simple question. QTrax's answer?

Eventually, Qtrax will have millions of songs available for downloading. Qtrax accesses the universe of P2P directly, which has an ever-expanding galaxy of files. If it's available on P2P, you will eventually be able to get it on Qtrax.

"Hello, Jim, how's your wife?"
"Eventually, she will die. In the fullness of time, she's going to turn back to dust and then be atomised."

I'm a bit lost about why Qtrax is so excited about that last bit: "hey, you know those songs you can find on peer to peer networks? Well, in an undefined period of time in the future you'll be able to find them on Qtrax, too. So... you know... if you wait until... whenever... you can download them from us. Oh, you're downloading them now? Oh."

Still: QTrax all launched, even if it's mostly at the moment just a list of links to Amazon.

[via Hypebot]

Qtrax: Another bright new dawn

Every so often, you'll hear a noise coming from over there, and on investigation it turns out it's Qtrax making an announcement. You'll recall they've launched more times than a Cornish lifeboat, without ever having quite properly developing a business.

Having pledged, seriously and honestly, that they'd be under way in January, they're now back, with a new logo which makes them look a little like a 1980s financial services corporation, and a new business model:

“Advertisers are looking for concepts and people that accommodate their needs,” says boss Allan Klepfisz. “Qtrax has a completely new take on generating ad revenues globally. And what we think are really enticing propositions for consumers, that will provide other revenue streams- and impact on piracy.”

Apparently, they're now focusing on the "Asia Pacific region". Good luck with that, little guy.

QTrax now not even able to deliver a press conference

Ah, our old friends QTrax are at it again. Their form, you'll recall, is for making sweeping announcements and then quickly winding backwards when those plans are compared with the real world.

Now, they've got to the stage where they announce press conferences only to pull them at the last minute. They were going to make a big announcement on Christmas Eve. Only they had to pull it because, erm, everyone turned into The Master. Or something. Hypebot reports:

Apparently only one person is capable of speaking for the company or honoring its commitments and he was...ill. "Yes, it is true that we intended having a Press Conference today," said a post on the Qtrax blog. "And it’s also true, that in the last week, our CEO, became ill with a generally non-life-threatening but quite painful ailment - kidney stones. And it is also true he was admitted to hospital & thankfully is leaving today. So we’ve decided to cancel the conference".

Well, yes, kidney stones are pretty painful. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable if I'd invested in a company where only one guy knows what's happening well enough to be able to deliver an explanation to the public of what the plans are. What if - rather than kidney stones - he'd been hit by a bus?

Anyway, QTrax are happy to announce they're now going to launch in January. Wisely, they don't say which January.

QTrax: Another little fib?

The team at QTrax continue to delight with what can only be a prankster's approach to business. The world has been watching for a couple of years as they send out releases announcing something or other, only for a clarification to follow in a few days that reveals that, actually, the deals with the major labels they said they had weren't in place, or it's taking a little longer to get the music on the system than they expected, or it's simply not possible to download the actual Tina Turner to dance round your living room.

This week, they proudly revealed they'd done a brilliant deal with Baidu:

Qtrax (www.qtrax.com) announced today that Baidu, China's leading Internet search engine, has agreed to direct music related search inquiries from its Entertainment Portal, and Qian Qian Music Online sites to Qtrax's independent, free and legal download service, wherever Qtrax has the queried artist or song in its catalogue.

Allan Klepfisz, President and CEO of Qtrax, commented: "We are very pleased with Baidu's decision. As the dominant search engine in China, Baidu will provide us with substantial traffic from its music and entertainment portals. We, in turn, will provide the visitors they send to our independent free and legal site, a superior music discovery and download experience. In the coming weeks, we will progressively launch in each of nine Asia-Pacific countries and begin to divert and monetize traffic - for the benefit of artists and copyright holders - that previously found its way to non-licensed sites. We believe our offering, including information about the artists, is vastly superior to these unauthorized sites."

Wow. That's quite something.

Trouble is, Baidu - oh, yes - have said there isn't actually any such deal:

But comments from a Baidu representative on Wednesday did not seem to confirm that it would direct any users to Qtrax. "The partnership with Qtrax regards text-based information, such as singer backgrounds; it has nothing to do with the music itself," the Baidu representative said via e-mail.

No links to Qtrax appear to be showing up yet in Baidu's music search section or on its entertainment portal.

In other news, the villagers decided that next time QTrax yells that there's a wolf in the field, they might just not bother going to investigate.

[Story via Hypebot]

QTrax adds to pile of woe; needs more woe storage

QTrax - or the download service that still says it can - has got more problems as it struggles towards making its January 2008 launch date. Adding to a lawsuit filed against it last week by Oracle are two further lawsuits claiming QTrax owes money.

The Oracle lawsuit is especially bitter, as not only do they say QTRax owe them money, but also allege that QTrax has violated Oracle copyrights. Which isn't the greatest thing for a legal music service to have hanging round its neck.

QTrax claims that it's just about to get hold of some cash which will allow it to pay off these people:

Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz said Friday that the start-up has secured some funding and is close to putting its money problems behind it, but acknowledged that management has had trouble at times paying bills. He also argued that a start-up with financial problems isn't news.

Perhaps the people from the CNET news site asking him questions about his start-up and their problems with money should have been a clue to Klefisz that, actually, it is news.

QTrax: another launch to come, then

It's possible to start feeling a little sympathy for QTrax, the perpetually launching-then-delayed online music service. The company's head, Allan Klepfisz, has posted a monster blog entry promising that the sun will come out, tomorrow:

So why is Qtrax unique & uniquely powerful? Because of its licensing contracts, certainly. But also, because of its business model. Refined over the 7 years we spent in the wilderness. Working on the licenses and thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. Let me make a few reflections in this regard although I must ask you to forgive me if we don’t reveal every aspect of our “secret sauce(s)”.

He just sticks out his chin, and grins...

[Y]ou need to make the site attractive to advertisers. Obvious, you might say. Well, not obvious enough to be a priority to so many sites including most that offer music. They are sinfully unattractive. Especially to advertisers. And user-generated content doesn’t help either. It often makes advertisers nervous. And most of the big sites to date, are based on user generated content. Which gives us a massive opportunity. Because advertisers need to come online to find our demographic. But they want to do it in a predictable environment.

...tomorrow, tomorrow, he loves you, tomorrow...

Fourth, you need to be mindful of your costs. Something that streaming services are discovering. And they account for all of our free music legal competitors. And you need to find a way to make your licensing costs bearable. Something we’ve worked very hard at.

(Not streaming anything would, inarguably, keep your costs well under control)
... tomorrow, tomorrow, you're always...

We are nothing if not dogged. And stubborn. And determined. And God willing, our reward & that of our large number of stakeholders, is that we are very soon going to launch a powerfully attractive music service, with leading internet & media companies as marketing partners. That have existing substantial users. And we’ll progressively roll it out throughout the world.

You're always a day away.

Qtrax decides it's not hobbled enough

Last time we mentioned perpetual online punchline QTrax, it generated a comment (from, I'm sure, a real person who genuinely cared about QTrax) suggesting that we're taking money from Apple in order to rubbish the competition.

We're not. And, frankly, QTrax isn't competing with iTunes. It might be up against the ghost of SpiralFrog and whatever it is Napster are doing now, but not iTunes.

Still, as if the repeated launching and then non-appearance of the service hasn't already made you wonder if it wasn't all a cosmic joke, then this press release from BuyDRM might:

BuyDRM, a Microsoft-licensed PlayReady DRM solutions and service provider, successfully launched its KeyOS Silverlight DRM offering with Qtrax. Utilizing BuyDRM’s KeyOS technology, Qtrax will be able to expand their customer base and increase revenues. The KeyOS Silverlight DRM Solution provides a dedicated, scaleable and robust platform for Qtrax to securely deliver content to the majority of Internet users.

Not just DRM, but DRM wrapped up in Silverlight? That's like someone not just spitting in your chips, but then wrapping the chips up tightly in gaffer tape.

"We have been using KeyOS for over a year now and have been highly anticipating the launch of Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady. With support for PCs, Mac and soon Linux, the KeyOS Silverlight DRM Solution will allow us to tap into previously inaccessible audiences- immediately increasing our customer reach, relevance and revenue," said J. Christopher Roe, CTO of Qtrax.

This assumes, of course, that everyone who could run Silverlight will, and that's quite an assumption. Certainly, the NBA in America dropped Silverlight this season, giving as one reason that the need to install Micrsoft's product is a barrier to use.

Admitted, it's not an impossible barrier, but why choose something that requires a hefty install process? After all, what online music services are selling is convenience - and if you can get the same songs elsewhere more conveniently, why wouldn't you?

Still, you might just get away with it if you had prime mover advantage. Oh...

QTrax launches again

It seems we can't go through a couple of months without news of QTrax 'launching', or relaunching, or preparing to relaunch its launch.

Since the last time it launched when it didn't actually launch, similar-but-actually-working service SpiralFrog has thrown in the towel. Is QTrax worried that SpiralFrog had all those months advantage and still flopped?

But Qtrax maintains its business model is different than SpiralFrog's. The former CEO of SpiralFrog - Robin Kent, who left the company a year before it went under - serves as an advisor for Qtrax.

You see? That's totally a totally different model, because that guy's sat over there instead of standing there. You can smell the win, can't you?

QTrax has yet another launch

I'm making this third launch of QTrax, but one does lose count, don't you find? This time, at least, QTrax has got a deal with all the majors and, thus, some music to offer through it's not-at-all-clunky system:

The advertising-supported service works like this: users can download songs to a PC and move them to a portable device, but must sync the devices once a month. DRM prevents copying — it’s based on Windows Media Player 11 and the .NET framework — but also allows for tracking the number of plays and paying artists and labels based on that. Ads will be on the web, but not in songs.

About 300,000 users have been participating in the beta, according to Qtrax. The service isn’t iPod compatible but the company says it should work on a large range of cellphones and players.

Aha - nothing like the "it won't work on the music player you probably own, but providing you remember to sync every thirty days and have a device which can cope with Windows Media, why the world is your oyster" offering. Oh, and adverts. Did we mention the adverts?

QTrax has another difficult launch

You'll recall QTrax, the free music service which launched with some fanfare and claims of deals with the majors earlier this year only to have the majors deny it.

Well, they've launched again - for PC using Americans only.

Or maybe not even them, as Ars technica reports:

Signup and installation of the client for "the world's first free and legal P2P music download network" went without a hitch. Qtrax is only available in the US for now, and then only on Windows (a Mac client is on its way) at its re-re-relaunch. After getting the company's client up and running, we were surprised by what appears to be yet another false start. Everything in the store works—artist banners are plugged into the main storefront, searching for artists returns respectable results, and advertising is alive and well—but clicking to preview or download a track simply does nothing. The store reported over 6,000 users online during our testing, but we aren't sure if any of them are having better luck than we are.

Admittedly, this is only being flagged as a Beta launch - which is geek for "we haven't tested this properly" or "we have tested this, but it doesn't work" - but since this is the third time round for QTrax, you'd have thought they'd have realised from their already tattered reputation that they need to take care to build confidence of those who still believe. Perhaps they got the Sainsburys.co.uk team in?

MIDEM 2008: FT senses restraint

The Financial Times' overview of MIDEM paints a picture of, if not austerity, then at least restraint:

Normally, business at Midem is conducted from yacht to yacht, but seasoned veterans of the industry’s most prolonged schmooze have already detected a certain restraint in spending this year. Maybe it can be laid at the door of EMI. When Guy Hands of Terra Firma first gained entrance to the venerable institution, he declared it a mountain of waste.

Although having hundreds of staff from an industry pop over to the South of France is, in itself, a bit of a cash burn-off, isn't it?

The FT's man with the Pina Colada, Ben Fenton, was asked to believe a thousand unlikely things before each good breakfast:

Robin Hunt, former CEO of Spiral Frog, the first serious attempt at an ad-supported download service, and now chief strategy office of Qtrax, the next and rather more heavyweight effort, told me that whichever single is number one in the US is having five million songs a day stolen.

Five million songs a day? Really? That means 1.8 billion downloads of just the number one single, every year. Or every man, woman and child in the US 'stealing' a copy of a number one single every two months.

But worldwide, last week, the IFPI insisted that the ratio of legal:illegal downloads was 1:99. And that there were 1.7 billion legal downloads. Which means we're expected to believe that one per cent of all illegal downloads worldwide consists of American number one singles downloaded in the week they were number one.

That's just bollocks, isn't it? Another made-up number being thrown around. It's a pity Ben didn't ask him to prove his eye-catching claim. Or, indeed, where his licence agreements actually were. Do QTrax executives have jedi mind control skills or something?

[Part of MIDEM 2008]

MIDEM 2008: Qtrax: follow the money

Why would a company announce its super-duper new service when it knew that it didn't have any licenses for the service? Hypebot wonders if it was all about the share price for QTrax:

Another explanation may be stock manipulation. Qtrax is controlled by Brilliant Tech Corp (BLLN) who's penny stock has languished at 5 cents for more than a year. But on Monday rafter the announcement the price almost doubled to 9 cents before falling back to a 4.5 cents after revelations from the label.s And now speculators willing to gamble that Qtrax will complete the deals have raised the stock to 5.5 cents.

What's even more interesting is that the price [dynamic page, so won't be relevant by the end of the week] appears to have hit 9 cents at the end of trading on Friday - before the announcement - despite there being very few trades of BLLN shares; there was, however, a lot of activity in the market on the Monday.

[Thanks to Michael M for the link]
[Part of MIDEM 2008]

MIDEM 2008: The other side of the Trax

So, what happened to QTrax, then?

Someone's posted a link in the comments to one of our earlier stories to an unofficial website which is linking through to an .exe which it claims is the official download of the service - but, frankly, you'd have to be so trusting to even try such a link as to be incapable of functioning in the real world.

The official site, meanwhile, is still promising the download will go live at midnight last night, New York time, while the media is catching on. The Times reports the company being in a "humiliating climbdown":

Questioned by The Times in Cannes today, Alan Klepfisz, Qtrax's flamboyant chief executive, insisted that he had not misled the industry or music fans.

"We are not idiots," he said."We wouldn’t have launched the service in front of the whole music industry unless we had secured its backing. We feel we have been unfairly crucified because a competitor tried to damage us. Everyone is very upset."

But has QTrax been lying about having the majors onboard? Opinion is split: the labels deny they've signed anything; QTrax claims they have.

Sort-of:

"We do have industry agreements including the major labels. Even today we are working on more deals," Mr Klepfisz said. He added that although "ink hadn't dried" on some of the deals, Qtrax still planned to deliver on its promises "within months."

So, last night they were launching with all four majors; now, it turns out, there might be some, um, negotiations still to take place.

The funny thing is, this isn't the first time QTrax has announced it's done deals with the big four. Back in June 2007, the New York Post was being told by the company a very similar story:

With a full complement of songs from the major labels as well as the esoteric live recordings and personal tracks stemming from users' own collections, Klepfisz estimates Qtrax will have access to between 20 million and 30 million copyrighted songs at launch in October.
[...]
That Qtrax has the support of the four major record labels - EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group - and all of their respective publishing divisions underscores the industry's increasing realization that peer-to-peer services can't be sued out of existence and instead should be embraced as a potentially lucrative new source of revenue.

So, half a year ago they were claiming to have all the big labels on board. That ink's taking a bloody long time to dry, isn't it?

They'd also been promising a September launch, too. Round about the time they took on SpiralFrog executives, last April.

[Part of MIDEM 2008]

MIDEM 2008: Amazon say remember us?

Although Amazon haven't bothered to send anyone to MIDEM, they've taken the opportunity of the event to announce plans to roll out their DRM free MP3 store internationally.

Or, rather, if not actually announce plans, to mention that it might happen, and just about loud enough to try and take the shine off some other announcements:

"We have received thousands of emails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the US," Amazon.com VP of digital music, Bill Carr, said.

"We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year."

Of course, "going international this year" might mean a 100-territory roll out before Valentines Day, or a Polish store sometime late December. The lack of any real information in the announcement lends itself to the suggestion the latter might be more likely.

Ironically, of course, the main effect of Amazon's announcement was to take attention away from the QTrax offering - which worked against Amazon's interests, leaving the headlines hanging without much overview of the detail. Downloads still not working, by the way.

MIDEM 2008: QTrax misses launch

QTrax - the 'legal' peer-to-peer service - is starting to fall apart already: it missed the midnight in New York launch (although, if you use a Mac, it's asking you to wait until March 18th anyway); more worryingly, QTrax's claims to have all the majors onboard has been denied by Warners, EMI and Universal. Sony BMG haven't said they've not given permission; but they've not yet confirmed they have, either.

PaidContent's vedict, looking at the expensive marketing push in Midem and the short-fall in actual service? This is SpiralFrog all over again.

MIDEM 2008: Labels embrace peer-to-peer technology

Yet more confused positions from the big labels emerges as QTrax is announced at MIDEM.

Having spent years insisting that giving away music for nothing teaches that music is valueless, and thus not worth paying for, the labels eventually added the rider 'except, of course, if there's advertising being sold and we get a share - then, magically, the idea of giving music away doesn't teach the negative message', now the labels are, um, throwing their weight behind file-sharing.

Yes, in the same week that the IFPI issued a report which suggested that filesharing was difficult, unpopular and offered a poor range of music choices, comes the announcement of QTrax. QTrax is a free, peer-to-peer service which will also be advertising supported - and it's got the labels on board. Because they are having their mouths shoved full with QTrax's gold, and because Microsoft's DRM is going to make the tracks virtually unusable, the majors are happy to give the nod to the service.

It's nice to see the record companies finally accepting that they're not going to wipe filesharing off the internet and trying to find a way to work with it; it's just unfortunate that they've missed the factors which have made illegal file-sharing such a success. And it's going to be fun to watch the RIAA trying to vilfy filesharing, except for the bits its members have financial interests in.

Another attempt to make file-sharing profitable

Qtrax is launching in October, and claims to have 20 to 30 million copyrighted songs representing all four major labels ready to share, in return for the watching of some advertising.

We're a little puzzled by the "20 to 30 million", though - to not know within a margin of error of ten million tracks what your offer is seems a little, um, overly-relaxed, doesn't it?