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Posted on 01/28/2008 10:27:27 AM PST by TChris
Last night we told you about Qtrax, a new P2P service aimed at combating illicit P2P by offering a legit service that compensates artists and labels via enforced advertising. In that story we briefly noted that Qtrax didn't appear to have all of its ducks in a row: the company was saying that it had signed all four major music labels, when it appeared that they hadn't. At the time it was rather unclear, however, because Qtrax told both Reuters and Wired that it had the necessary signatures.
When midnight came and went last night without an official launch, it became clear that there were indeed problems. For its part, Qtrax now says that it is in negotiations with all of the labels, but that admission came only after it was discovered that Qtrax had somewhat misrepresented itself.
Late last night the LA Times called around to confirm the deal and found that only Universal would say that it was close to a deal. EMI and Warner denied a deal was in place, and Peter Kafka says that Sony BMG has also denied that there was a deal in place. In short, no labels have signed on yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at arstechnica.com ...
pre-tech-ping ping :-)
Gee. I’m shocked. I really thought all the music companies were going to give away their product for free. Gosh darn it!
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Sometimes even free is too expensive...
The model is that the music companies and artists will be paid for the content from advertising revenues, not that they will give it away for free. That said, it doesn’t seem like a model that will generate enough revenue to work for very long.
Has the potential to fail massively because the labels will likely want way too much $$$ - probably with guarantees.
The thing about Internet advertising is that it ain’t worth squat unless you’re generating major traffic volume. Any startup like this would take a while to ramp up and get the word out before the traffic volume would get to the level needed to pay the label’s bill.
crypto p2p works so much better.
Dang, I was hoping the record labels had finally pulled their heads out from between their legs. I’d buy music online if I could find an online store I like, which I haven’t, and this one sounds perfect, plus it would have been free. I hope there is actually something to this.
This sure hasn’t turned into the “IceT’s ‘F*** da police’” music industry conference moment the fools at QTrax thought this would be.
Looking more like OQO’s Model 01 ultrapersonal computer vaporware pc instead.
I don't believe that music has zero value, which would mandate a price of $0.00. Expecting professional musicians to produce quality music for nothing is economically unrealistic.
That said, bad music doesn't have the same value as good music either. Continuing to market all music as though it has the same value (same price) is also economically unrealistic.
The ideal model would compensate better music with higher prices, and allow copyrights to expire in a reasonable amount of time. Lifetime (and beyond) copyrights stifle creativity because they remove the incentive to create. If I can receive exclusive revenues for a protected work for ever, why would I ever want to create more?
If a music download site were to develop some way of pricing songs in a more market-driven way, more people would willingly pay for the downloads. Charging me the same price for the newest, most popular releases as for 40-year-old releases from obscure artists is offensive. Let the market work, and it will give incentive to artists to create better material.
For example, a song that currently sells like hotcakes could be priced at $2.00 to download, and the 40-year-old sentimental piece could be priced at $0.10 to download. That would be realistic.
Maybe they should be free after 10 or 20 years or something.
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