New online music service

[mathew.bevan]

Recently, I saw a reference to a new music service called qtrax. It says that music will be free because its paid for by advertisers, and that it will directly compete with illegal P2P services. System requirements will be Windows Xp, Vista and Mac, however, it states that it is based on a Mozilla browser. Has anyone heard of this? Do you think it could be used on Linux in the future?

[Rhakios]

Oh dear, first post and for a self-confessed paid for by ads site. Do I detect the aroma of processed meat products? I think I'm going to delete the url you give.

[towy71]

oink oink oink

[ollie]

Actually this has hit the newspapers today as well. It actually looks like a legit download competitor to iTunes with a similar number of songs. The problem - Windows XP/Vista client software required!

IMHO piracy occurs because companies over value their products. Radiohead offered an "honesty download" and the average amount paid was about GBP8 (I don't have one of those funny shaped money things ). The minimum amount was accepted was zero cost. This indicates that consumers acceptable price for an album is GBP8, not the GBP9 to GBP14 or more advertised on Virgin Music UK.

We'll just have to see if this is a success for long enough to get Linux client, after the Mac client in two months

[nelz]

I'm suspicious of free services that require you to run special software. Who knows what information that software is gathering in order to further finance the service.

If you want to take the chance, try running the Windows software in WINE or a virtual machine.

[ollie]

I'll definitely be waiting for the Linux version and looking at the traffic with wireshark if it's not encrypted. There are too many cases of rootkits, privacy intrusion, etc from the music industry just to blindly trust them. I've got a sneaky suspicion that this will be tied down with Vista DRM or worse.