Qtrax- a music lesson lesson to be learnt by all

by: admin Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Rating: Moral of the story is first make sure they’ve signed the contracts
by Tony Dennis

I’ve been following the trails and
tribulations of the freshly launched music service, Qtrax, with considerable
interest. After all, it is an ad-funded, free music service. While it only works
(and even that’s disputable) with PCs at present, hopefully the model can be
transferred to the mobile world.

So what’s gone wrong? Well, the service was feted with a launch budget of over
$500,000 at the music industry bean-fest that is Midem in Cannes. [Lucky beggars. They haven't been
forcefully evicted to Barcelona like us.]

Anyway, no sooner had Qtrax - a unit of New York-based Brilliant Technologies -
arrived claiming a catalogue of some 25 to 30 million tracks, than all four big
players - EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal - all said they hadn’t actually
agreed deals.

Which is pretty amasing really since as long ago as April 23rd 200, Qtrax had
put out a Press release saying that they’d just signed with Sony BMG and the others
who had already signed up included "Warner Music Group, EMI Music and EMI Music
Publishing, Sony/ATV, Universal Music Publishing, The Orchard, ASCAP, BMI and
others." Hmm. You’d have thought somebody would have noticed then.

Anyway, it seems to me that the majors got
jealous of all the publicity generated at Midem by Qtrax; decided to check; and
discovered that the agreements – detailing what share of ad revenues they’d get
– hadn’t actually been inked. So they backed off.

I asked Pascal Grierson from mobile accessible music service, Cliq, what he
thought. "Qtrax is trying something more or less new, but on a grand scale
- and they should be applauded for that," he told me. "I get the
feeling they are not afraid to rattle a few cages and jump a few guns but for
their launch the bark is louder than the bite.

By contrast to Qtrax, it’s taken CLIQ nearly two years get its system 100 per cent robust and to get unanimous support from
record labels and radio stations. "I wish Qtrax well, but they may have
moved a little too quickly for the majors and they need to keep them onside to
get maximum catalogue. New models are exciting to them but need careful
planning and implementation."

So there you have it. In the hectic world
of music, don’t jump until you’re absolutely sure the parachute is attached.