Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent, in Cannes
Posted on 01/27/2008 7:37:25 PM PST by Stoat
After a decade fighting to stop illegal file-sharing, the music industry will give fans today what they have always wanted: an unlimited supply of free and legal songs.
With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks.
The service has been endorsed by the very same record companies - including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music – that have chased file-sharers through the courts in a doomed attempt to prevent piracy. The gamble is that fans will put up with a limited amount of advertising around the Qtrax website’s jukebox in return for authorised use of almost every song available.
The service will use the “peer-to-peer” network, which contains not just hit songs but rarities and live tracks from the world’s leading artists.
Nor is a lack of compatibility with the iPod player expected to put fans off. Apple is unlikely to allow tracks downloaded from its rival to be compatible with iPods, but, while the iPod is the most popular music player, it has not succeeded in dominating the market: sales of the iPod account for 50 million out of 130 million total digital player sales. Qtrax has also spoken of an “iPod solution”, to be announced in April.
Qtrax files contain Digital Rights Management software, allowing the company to see how many times a song has been downloaded and played. Artists, record companies and publishers will be paid in proportion to the popularity of their music, while also taking a cut of advertising revenues.
The Qtrax team, which spent five years working on the system, promised a “game-changing” intervention in the declining recorded music market when the service was presented at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes.
The singer James Blunt gave Qtrax a cautious welcome. “I’m amazed that we now accept that people steal music,” he said. “I was taught not to steal sweets from a sweet shop. But I want to learn how this service works, given the condition the music industry is in.”
Qtrax, a subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Corporation, has raised $30 million (£15 million) to set up the service, which is available in the US and Europe from today. Allan Klepfisz, president of Qtrax, said: “Customers now expect music to be free but they do not want to use illegal sites. We believe this . . . has the support of the music industry and allows artists to get paid.”
Ford, McDonald’s and Microsoft are among the advertisers signed up to support what is thought to be the world’s largest legal music store. The service says that adverts will be nonintrusive and will not appear each time a song is played. As with iTunes, customers will have to download Qtrax software. They will own the songs permanently but will be encouraged to “dock” their player with the store every 30 days so it can gather information on which songs have been played.
Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of Vivendi Universal, said the crisis in the music industry had been overstated despite EMI’s radical cost-cutting. He said: “Look at Universal – we have double-digit profit margins. But we would like strong competition from the other major record companies to help the industry grow.” Universal has poached the Rolling Stones from EMI and Mr Levy said that others could follow as thousands of staff and artists are made redundant.
On the appearance of Qtrax, Mr Levy gave warning that the lack of compatibility between competing digital music players was as big a problem as file-sharing. And Paul McGuinness, the manager of U2, said that the sound quality of MP3 downloads was becoming an issue for bands and fans. “There is a growing consumer revolt against online audio quality,” he said.
Songwriters sell the rights to their songs to publishing companies because they individually dont have the cash to do the non-stop, random, deep forensic audits neccessary to discourage labels from hiding sales and shortchanging the writer(s). If legal action against a label is ever neccessary on a songwriters behalf, the publisher has to eat the expenses, its part of the publishing deal.
A big songwriter can establish their own phantom publishing company and the big publishers will administer the rights on their behalf, which slightly ups the percentage of the (rounded) 9 cent-per song per-unit sold mechanical royalty.
In my case it's not "hate", merely caution which as it turns out was entirely justified.
I don’t see the problem with the atom, especially since I’m not in the business of giving out songs.
Sure, sure. But don't try to be polite. Tell us how you REALLY feel about them!
I'm not in any such business either, but I just don't appreciate it when a company that I pay money to adds secret tracking codes into a file without telling me beforehand.
It's no big issue to me personally, as I don't get into MP3's much to begin with. CD's and vinyl usually sound noticeably better on my system, and so all of this is rather an academic point for me.
If you enjoy iTunes and don't mind what Apple has done, then more power to you and full steam ahead. :-)
Please, define it any way you like and enjoy it in any manner you choose.
Again, more power to you and full steam ahead :-)
No German Volksmusic please. Yuck!
Most likely any artists who negotiated their contracts before the age of online music won't get a penny either.
ping
I wonder if I can download a free copy of The Byrds' 'Mr. Spaceman'?
Apple has always embedded purchaser info in songs bought from iTunes. I believe its purpose was to work with the DRM to identify the authorized user. Apple just didn't strip this out when moving to non-DRM music.
But that's just a step down from watermarking, a technology for finding infringing works on the Internet since the 90s.
"I'm as happy as a little girl."
Dunno. I just Googled "Worst Album Covers" and that was the most appalling example I could find.
Those guys are actually pretty good, revolutionary pioneers of electronic music. They were one of the first, if not the first, band to move from regular to electronic instruments, and even created one of the early electronic drum kits.
Record companies and publishers don’t pay anybody what’s due them unless there’s an iron-clad, bullet-proof deal requiring it. Even when there is a contract calling for payment, many make it more costly and troublesome than most are willing or able to go through. “Airplay” royalties are the only ones a writer can effectively collect because that moey goes through the licensing organization. “Mechanical” royalties, which go through the record companies and publishers, are often not likely to reach the writer. I think it’s been that way for a long, long time. The good news is that a smart, young, talented artist/writer/band can self-market via the internet today, controlling the music from beginning to end. It won’t get airplay on commercial radio, but that market is shrinking anyway. Selling CDs or downloads online is a market that is readily accessible to the savvy artist and far more profitable to the artist than selling CDs which feed the record company first.
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