by
James Davis
 In a world of illegal music downloading, “Qtrax” offers a solution to download an unlimited amount of music for free, and legally.
However, can this miracle software back up its words, or will its claims be drowned out by the music?
Most (illegal) music downloaders use peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software, such as Limewire and BearShare.
The main idea of a P2P is in its name; someone, a peer, shares a song on their computer, and another peer looking for that song would use the software to download it directly.
This act is considered illegal if there are no royalties paid to the song's record label and recording artist(s).
That's where Qtrax comes to play.
Qtrax, www.qtrax.com, is offering a P2P music downloading service, free of charge, to the open public. There are advertisements embedded within the program, so the royalties are paid with the ad revenue.
The interface would be a lot like Napster when it was free, where one would simply search the name of a song, then if available, click on the song and enjoy it in a matter of minutes (possibly sooner). There is also the choice of using Qtrax as a media player (very similar to Windows Media Player) and web browser, made possible with the integrated software of Songbird.
Finally, the program's layout is modern and appealing, if you can look past the advertisements, with plenty of shiny buttons to press.
There is only one problem… for a program whose main purpose is to download music, there are currently a limited number of songs available to download. Qtrax was to debut on January 28, with promises of offering over 25 million songs for download (which alone is questionable, as there haven't been THAT many songs that have been digitalized for download, ever… nowhere near 25 million).
In any event, no one can download any song until Qtrax finalizes their music licensing deals. However, the company loves to tease their customers. To receive music regularly, one must sign up for an account on their website, and an account activation email will subsequently be sent to the user. Granted, this is a normal action for most websites of this nature.
However, it is also a normal action for the website to actually send an email, which Qtrax fails to do.
Whether this may be a system glitch or an intentional move is unknown, but this is preventing users from downloading anything (assuming that there is something to download).
The company claimed to have made deals with four large record labels: Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI, and Universal Music Group.
Regretfully, this was not completely true.
Hours before the debut of the software, Warner Music issued a statement that no authorization of music distribution has been granted to Qtrax. Universal Music and EMI later confirmed the same, and furthermore stated that talks of a deal were still ongoing.
Several years ago, Qtrax had made agreements with a few labels, but those deals have since expired.
So until at least one major label signs a distribution agreement with the company, the P2P functionality of the program still ceases to exist.
Allan Klepfisz, president of Qtrax, claims that this inconvenience of no music downloading is only temporary.
Meaning, if a user were to download Qtrax, they would only discover a glorified music player and internet browser.
This program has the potential to become another Napster, possibly even better. But the masses will have to wait until all the legal paperwork has been taken care of.
Downloaders are still crossing their fingers, hoping that Qtrax is worth the wait.
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