Qtrax? More like "few tracks." Oh! Burn!
A few days ago, the blogosphere was buzzing with the news that Qtrax, an MP3 download site, had signed a deal with all the major labels to provide free downloads on everything in their catalog. Wired loved it, and rightly so (read their updated article). ReadWriteWeb had even posted (arguably, it was a good post) the pros and cons of such a deal. However, all was not as Qtrax had claimed.
On the Reuters wire today is the rebuttal from the labels, who collectively grunt, "nuh-uh."
EMI Music, Sony BMG and Warner all previously had agreements with Qtrax, which was testing a paid music download service. Sources say those agreements expired in the last year and did not cover the new free, ad-supported model now being promoted by Qtrax.
This denial not only totally burns Qtrax, but it also shames some of the blogs who repeated the story considering many of them are so self righteous when it comes to pointing the finger at traditional journalists who repeat stories without fact-checking (kinda like I'm doing right now. :-)).
Long story short, Qtrax lied. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, guys.
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