EMI offers music catalog to Qtrax network

The EMI Group record label has licensed its music catalog of more than 1,000 artists to Qtrax, a legal peer-to-peer network owned by Brilliant Technologies. Qtrax, which has yet to be released, also has licensing agreements with several other music corporations, such as BMI and the Association of Independent Music.

Legal P2P networks have become more commonplace in the wake of the crackdowns on illegal file sharing, and major record labels appear to be interested in collaborating with them. Last month, EMI struck a similar licensing deal with start-up Mashboxx; like Qtrax, Mashboxx has yet to launch. The business models of these legal P2P networks vary, however. Mashboxx, for example, plans to charge a 99-cent fee for downloading a song that has been "claimed" by a record label. Qtrax, on the other hand, hopes to offer unlimited free downloads through an ad-supported service. As for whether either model will prove successful, it's still far too early to tell.

[kael20]

There is already legal P2P

I don't understand. I read this article and it talks about legal P2P and mentions mashboxx which so far seems to be vaporware. There is already a legal P2P called Peer Impact that sells all the major labels for music and it is now selling TV shows and movies. Yet you guys never seem to mention them. It just shows how news can be bias and not fully tell everyone about services.

[C.Schroeder]

Differentiation

Other factors to consider are:
- the strength of the DRM (or lack of it),
- quality of the encoding.

Suppose a legal P2P service were to provide music tracks encoded at a low bit rate, but free of DRM, supported by advertising. Great for sampling music and passing around among friends (i.e. word of mouth advertising), but some consumers will find the quality lacking and turn to other service(s) to acquire a better quality version for long-term enjoyment. Read http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/578 to get a better sense of this.

NOTE: long-term is a subjective description, because ANY product wrapped in DRM will eventually be rendered unusable (legally), so long as the DMCA is in effect. I refuse to buy DRM protected music.

Curt