Following a pledge for ISPs to take more responsibility for protecting music online from John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive officer of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPA), a new free and legal online file-sharing service will be available from today.
A new version of Qtrax, an online file-sharing service offering unlimited, free downloads with permission of major recording companies, marks an important change of direction in the music industry.
Instead of obtaining money through downloads, record company licensing fees will be generated through the advertising space. Qtrax allows users to download tracks from a selection of 30 million, through file-sharing networks and tunes could be stored indefinitely on PCs or MP3 players, however copy-protection technology prevents users from burning copies to a CD.
It has been confirmed that users will be able to play tracks obtained from Qtrax on Apple iPods and Macintosh computers as early as March. Allan Klepfisz, Qtrax’s president and chief executive, said: “We’ve had a technical breakthrough which enables us to put songs on an iPod without any interference from Fair-Play.” As the new download service would heavily undermine iTunes it has been suggested that Apple would develop new blocks in response to Qtrax to stop them working on iPods.
Ford, McDonald’s and Microsoft are rumoured to be among the first advertisers to support the Qtrax service.
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That was a hoax! Type in Qtrax beta release or Qtrax hoax on google and see what you get.