I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but in case you haven’t heard: The era of paid music downloads is coming to an end (despite the fact that online sales are growing).
Qtrax, which has signed all four major labels (EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group), launched yesterday with 25 million songs (compared to around 3 m for Amazon and 6 m for iTunes). Note: See update below.
It isn’t pretty - the downloaded songs are not compatible with iPods and have to be played via a proprietary player built on the Songbird platform. Ads are displayed during playback, even on music devices. For now the service is Windows only, so Mac users are left out. And right now the service is down completely from all the attention it’s getting.
For most people, BitTorrent and the music search engines are all they need for their illegal-but-highly-convenient music needs. Any additional hurdles means not a ton of usage. And since services like Imeem and Last.fm provide free on demand streaming music with ads, there is already real competition out there for Qtrax.
But the trend is clear - labels have given up on DRM completely and are willing to experiment with ad supported free downloads. Once they give up on the ad supported part of the model and just realize that recorded music is nothing more than marketing collateral for other revenue streams like live performances, we’ll have gotten somewhere. But my guess is that one of the labels has to go out of business first for that to happen.
Update: based on emails we’re getting, it sounds like Qtrax hasn’t actually signed all four labels - at least one or two remain on the sidelines. Silicon Alley Insider says three of the four labels have confirmed that they AREN’T in, making Qtrax look like a bit of a joke right now (I won’t use the word “fraud” until this all sorts itself out and I’ve had a chance to talk directly to the company).
This is somewhat of a win for users. But I still look forward to downloading free legal music that works on any player and I could put it on my ipod. But lets keep hope a live….
The music WILL be compatible with Ipods within a month. This has been in the works and will be huge.
Record? What’s a record?
Worse that spiralfrog and SITE IS DOWN! Anonymous strikes again.
So many people reporting on Qtrax and it’s not even up.
TOO FUNNY.
Epic phailure
Idea is good… will see were they are going to put the ads… in the middle of the song?
It’s temporarily down
Why do these guys think that i have the need to p2p download songs..
What is the added value of p2p?? Songs are so small they can be streamed even on very small bandwidth..
The only reason people use p2p to download music is because they can get it for free or they can get rare content.. Not because p2p is such a superior platform for downloading music.. These guys are stupid..
http://www.gratista.com
go in peace, young padawan
I imagine the benefit is for them - as always, keeping costs down I suppose .. I don’t think they believe P2P is better for the end user either.
@CasaMan: because p2p is a great way of saving bandwidth if you have thousands of people downloading albums or songs.
Legal… hmm… What about RIAA?
I still don’t get it at all. Just because there are some problems in the industry doesn’t mean they all just need to ‘realize’ that you’re right. Your model may work for some bands, and that’s fine, but I would guess at any given point in time the majority of bands are not performing live, and probably couldn’t sell a t-shirt to save their life– but somehow because it works for a few people or traditional sales have slowed, TC and Techdirt think they just have the whole answer to be applied across the board. It’s nothing remotely close to evidence that recorded music is essentially unsaleable. It just means there are all kinds of different ways to distribute and make money off of good music.
Broken record is right. I often wish some of the backseat drivers on this issue would start a label or a band and reap the fruits of the ideas they continually espouse as though they are a done deal.
I bet this will work just as well as the banner supported NetZero vs Cable and ADSL.
You ARE sounding like a broken record, Michael. And you’re still dreaming.
No quality musicians are going to give away their music for free. Of coruse, they’ll experiment with various monetization models…but you have no right to expect something of value for free.
Otherwise, I can take all your TC junk and republish it verbatim and you won’t come after me, right? Because, after all…”Information needs to be free! Find a different business model! Sell autographed pictures or something!”
You’re living in a dreamland. Quality is quality. Value is value. And it’s a fool’s errand to keep trying to pretend it’s not. Honor that which of value by paying for it.
Michael - It may be a little premature to suggest that Qtrax has “launched.” A friend of mine is at the Midem conference in France, and Qtrax’s “launch” has again been delayed, until midnight tonight — after a big run-up to its allegedly star-studded press conference (apparently they didn’t show up, either). At the press conference, somebody tried to ask about the DRM with the service - and he had the microphone taken away from him! Too good to be true? Hmm…
So in order to “keep the cost down” by saving BW they handicap themselves by using P2P.. I don’t see how they could win the fight against ad-supported free streaming/download sites.. They are saving like $0.0008 per song on BW.. That’s 8 cent CPM! I say deadpool for Qtrax..
Correction 80 cents.. but still..
Chuck, I’m extremely disappointed by your opinion. Things of “value” are given away for free every single day. There are very basic rules of supply and demand that Music companies are used to dealing with. These rules DO NOT translate to digital content very well at all because once something is made digital the supply is effectively infinite.
The bands will be perfectly able to sustain themselves AND give the music away, thanks to technology. Sponsored albums, merchandise sales, and even online concerts (http://web2-oh.blogspot.com/2008/01/set-content-free.html). Conforming to a broken standard for the sake of adding “value” is simply misinformed and wrong.
Michael, I think you also need to post a correction about DRM. The music from that service is incredibly DRM-laden according to several reports.
Oh, and Chuck, there are a lot of differences between text and audio, and YES you should absolutely be able to reproduce what he says. But the difference with music is you almost have no choice but to offer a citation (Band-song-album, you know). I’m sure if you offered a citation for Michael’s posts he wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Who is John Galt?
@2: You’re wrong. It won’t be available for iPod in a month. It won’t even be available for Mac until late March. Apple won’t open up the iPod for this crap. And if QTrax wanted to dump plain MP3s on to the iPod, then they would destroy there own business model since the user won’t be staring at ads while it plays. Not to mention that an ad supported model won’t work anyway because who looks at their player while playing music?
Multitrack audio masters can only be sold, this is the next step after DRM-free, and you can of course remix the song but even sell it…
http://www.corvaisier.fr/2008/.....tal-music/
I don’t mean to single out TC here. This analysis is far better than the other crap about QTrax on the web right now. However, how do I get my press release on every major blog? Seriously, I’d like to know. Sure this is an interesting idea, but no one has used this service and can comment on how ugly it really is.
Yay for Qtrax and Amazon getting these music deals. Can we bring back Napster with a bang?
Chuck and Morgan are right.
I think Michael himself has complained about sites copying TC’s content directly and reposting it. The argument doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny if you apply to any digitally reproducable content. Are we supposed to go see live performances of movies? Will publishers only get paid for signed copies of their books? Who’s going to watch ad supported TV if they can download a free version without commercials?
I think the recent success of In Rainbows as a physical purchase is a sign that even if the music was offered for free cunsumers would still prefer to own physical representation. History also reflects this. Remember when VHS movies were sold for the first time - everybody was shocked at their success when you could buy a movie in a store that was also being shown in network TV at the same time. Why wouldn’t you just record the movie from TV rather than buy it from a store?
The same applies to music. There will always be a market for a physical purchase with loose ownership rights.
Yes and No Mike. It would work for artists that are willing to go on tour, but for the ones that just want to write music and play every now and again? Nope, there has to be some sort of revenue model in putting music out.
Not only that, even if you can say - anyone can record music, and they can these days with the way DAW’s have evolved, etc… to do it correctly, there is a lot of time and money involved in recording just one song. And if you have it professionally done because you just like to write and play music, but think recording it all is a hassle - than welcome to the world of recording studios, or hiring a professional engineer/producer.
Money that the artist has to recoup somehow. In this day and age, there are many that don’t want to go on the road and tour. Why? I dunno, I always personally found playing gigs was more fun than recording (pain in the a$$). But that’s me.
Rex
QTrax = Vaporware for the last 2 years.
All the efforts for nothing, why don’t they just release the mp3s with ads in the front, and screw DRM, it’d work anywhere. I bet other p2p networks would join the initiative if RIAA would open a negotiation table.
Why make money on a sale when you can make money on every play?
Just put a short ad at the beginning of every mp3 shared, you can even target what to stick in the mp3 as its being downloaded based on time, GMT, IP, it’s just plain dumb to do, the sponsored content model works fine for TV why not for on demand music…
And to comment #13, this is the RIAA’s P2P effort dude, read.
It’s also funny how this morning the site said they were down due to overwhelming demand, how stupid, they’re funded with millions of dollars, and sites run by regular Joe’s like FrostWire can take all the demand in the world with the effort of an organized community and no funding to distribute their p2p app. Maybe they’re client isn’t really P2P
They must be charging a pretty high CPM to be able to pay the artists with ad revenue.
Not compatible with ipods (and other mp3 players) and delivered on a proprietary platform. How much different is that from DRM?
Hey Michael - I just bought opentechcrunch.com. I’m assuming it’s cool if I just repost all your content there without compensation, and of course without all those lame ads you have and other stuff I don’t like? I mean, once you give up on the ad supported part of the model and just realize that written text is nothing more than marketing collateral for other revenue streams like conferences, we’ll have gotten somewhere. Let me know. Thanks!
Golly ad supported music.. this is sounding like something that the recording industry freaked out about a long time ago, but eventually broke to.. Radio lol
Heard of Spotify? They have been in beta for a long time… and have a really good service.
Honestly, I’d rather pay 99 cents to have no ads.
Im all for it and all….
But it also begs the question if the Internet has devalued music then all other digital content is devalued too!
Hey, it’s a good thing and I canceled Cable TV and just use the net to get my content! Albeit, economically as more do this our ISP bills will go up.
Time Warners capping bandwidth could be a good thing, as it should create a legal content Internet utopia(all copyrighted content is paid thru our bills). I always wanted A LA Carte cable..now I have it on the cheap - Im thinking not for too long though!
“the downloaded songs are not compatible with iPods and have to be played via a proprietary player built on the Songbird platform ….. labels have given up on DRM completely”
Ummm…. how is that *not* DRM, Michael? If I can’t play the songs anywhere I want, I don’t own them. The songs’ rights are being managed, digitally.
I’ll continue to pay for unrestricted music.
Way too simplistic Mike…Morgan (#12) hits it.
And, I do agree with the others that if it’s good for music, it should be good for you also. Can’t wait to visit opentechcrunch.com (is it up yet?) (have you been sued by Arrington yet?)
This isn’t the first legal p2p by any means. I was a part of the beta for Peer Impact a couple years ago which was legal p2p but it was only WMA Plays for Sure stuff. They seemed to have been ahead of their time since they disappeared.
“launched yesterday with 25 million songs (compared to around 3 m for Amazon and 6 m for iTunes)”
I can’t even find what I want in my own iTunes library. Anyone honking about 25 million as a unique selling proposition is doomed to fail.
the whole thing with ads is not nice.
steve jobs said something about open standards: all songs on alla players.
Where is that?
Morgan nails it. Not all musicians tour, I guess they should just starve in the streets, right Michael?
Erik, when you do opentechcrunch.com could you please filter out Duncan’s posts? Thanks.
“recorded music is nothing more than marketing collateral for other revenue streams like live performances” - well said, I’ve been trying to get people to recognize this for years. I give credit to the argument that studio recording is another medium for the art; a “perfect” version of a song with premium sound quality is valuable, but it’s just gotten out of control within the last couple decades. You would think that with the development of cheap digital recording studios would come cheaper music, but the big guys with all the money just wouldn’t give up their cash cow like that. Even if Qtrax isn’t the final solution, it’s a step in the right direction, IMHO.
looks like qtrax doesn’t have deals in place with at least 2 of the 4 major labels; did they mis-speak or deliberately mislead…?
http://www.alleyinsider.com/20.....x-wmg.html
rosey, nice catch. i don’t know what’s worse… NOT having a deal in place with Uniglobal or letting your Warner deal expire! WTH?
at least now we know why it’s not up yet
announcing a launch date for something this big and then not meeting it is like shooting yourself in the foot and then jumping into a shark tank
I don´t sell music! I sell shirts!
It´s a win for the users!
Dear Mike,
Can you please confirm whether or not the content on the *Crunch Blog network are copyrighted, and by who.
Thanks in advance.
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
The King is Dead, Long live the King….
This is years too late; the industry should have launched an ad driven service right after Napster went down. But they didn’t because they are money grubbing and wanted to continue milking of customers. People who are downloading music illegally are not going to see the light all of a sudden and start listening to music through an ad generated program. What the industry needs to do they are unwilling to and that is scrap their business model, layoff more than half of their employees and rebuild with a smaller organization with creative marketing. If not say goodbye to the major record labels in 10 years. Another alternative is to focus more on music videos which right now is just a side project for the industry. Video is easier to encrypt and with MP3 devices now all packing screens customers are more interested in the combination of listening and viewing instead of just listening by itself. Artist will have to make the majority of their money the old fashion way by touring.
If you’re interested you can check out how much artists are earning in concert sales here:
http://omg.yahoo.com/musics-bi...../news/5939
for example: the Police reunion tour made $133 million, and only around $9 million in album sales… the concerts is where the real money is, hence artists don’t complain much about “piracy”.
Roman: When you say “made $133 million” and “$9 million in album sales” you are talking revenue. I assure you, it’s a hell of a lot more expensive to put on a tour then it is to produce CDs — venue, travel, lodging, roadies, food, etc. The right numbers to be comparing would be profit.. good luck getting those.
Its one thing to develop viable revenue streams through banner ads for blogs and even internet service where costs are relatively “capped” and you can develop trend forecasts. You can’t use the radio metaphor as there is a limited number of stations in a market and they rarely compete directly causing a defined marketplace for advertisers. The web will not support the CPM levels you need to offer free Music. Further the Radio stations pay a much smaller fee per play.
Music is fundamentally different than a blog or news site, there is the “VC” like component where hits support the whole industry from a development perspective. Many “tours” have financial problems of their own and can’t support the use of music as collateral.
Once we accept the concept of music being “free” we will severely limit the possibility of the long tail of music, something we have enjoyed for a long time (even if we didn’t realize it) because the core business model will be destroyed. We may end up with just the “American Idols” and Justin Timberlakes unless we develop a new model that supports both consumers desire for less expensive use anywhere music and the industry itself.