Qtrax Casts Off The Vow Of Free Online Music Service by Milota Sidorova

Many of serious questions concerning future strategies of music industry have been discussed in Cannes last weekend. Names like Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, Joanna Shields, Bebo international president, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Music GM Ian Rogers, Steve Purdham, We7 CEO, Guy Hands, the new owner of British major EMI have appeared on the annual industry meeting. According to the valuation report, the music business is coming down, hardly surviving a huge crises, due to free internet sharing and downloading, simply called network piracy. The crises is calling for new alternative business models. Despite of increasing number of internet subscribers, which has advanced the strategy of online sales, provided by Apple Inc.'s iTunes or Amazon, the report claims they couldn't cover music industry losses. One of the most discussed topic, concerned Qtrax, ad-supported music service, that promised to lead off the sharing of its free online music. The initial plan featured the number of one million music tracks. The company reports that over 61,000 unique users per hour are using the Qtrax software by midday. The agreement was about to unravel, when a rejection came. Warmer Music Group Corp. declassified their attitude of no authorizing the firm to distribute it's artists music. This attitude was held by other major recording companies, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Britain's EMI Group PLC. Allan Klepfisz, Qtrax President and Chief Executive admitted the difficulties while negotiating with the labels. For now, Qtrax's ambitious and courageous promise is about to fail, although Klepfisz declared an expectation to put off the service in the following months.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080128/ts_alt_afp/usvote2008democrats_080128214933;_ylt=Ak2M4RNuMWrHr18x6tHc3Ays0NUE

by Milota Sidorova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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