Industry News

Qtrax Inks Short Term Deal with EMI, But Could it Succeed in 2011?
-- After many false starts, is Qtrax on its way to a launch? And is it too late? The "free and legal" download service has completed a licensing deal with EMI and may have more, according to reports at CNET and Wired. Wired got a confirmation from an EMI spokesperson that the company has a "short term agreement" with Qtrax. A source at another major told Billboard that a brief trial period was part of its discussions with Qtrax. The preview version of the service that is currently available at http://music.qtrax.com lists the music of all four majors as well as many indies.

The arrival of a full -- or even mostly -- licensed Qtrax product would be quite a surprise at this point. It was all the way back in January 2008 when Qtrax suffered from its infamous false launch. A year-and-a-half later, in July 2009, CEO Alan Klepfisz wrote a post at the Qtrax blog with a subtitle of "The Impossible Takes a Bit Longer." A "final, unalterable, unmovable launch time" was to come a week after that post. Over a year-and-a-half later, Qtrax is still nowhere to be seen.
 
If it awakens, Qtrax would appear to a much different world than what existed in January 2008. There was no Spotify, Rdio or MOG. Napster was still a publicly traded company that would be acquired in September 2008. Rhapsody was still a part of RealNetworks and spun off in February 2010. And Pandora was not yet the Internet radio juggernaut it is today.

But maybe it's too late -- for the U.S. market, at least. The Qtrax model, which placed an emphasis on downloading, now seems better suited for an earlier age. In January 2008, consumers were more firmly rooted in downloads. The iPhone had been out for only about seven months. Vevo didn't yet exist. Lady Gaga, who now has over 1 billion YouTube streams, had net yet released her first album.

Since then, consumers have started to shift away from downloads and toward the cloud. So have investors. The major venture capital dollars have flowed into cloud-based services that emphasize streaming and caching, not downloading.

Most worrisome is the product itself, the preview version, a confusing experience to anyone weaned on more user-friendly music products like iTunes, Rhapsody or, well, anything else but this. Finding and listening to music on Qtrax is a cumbersome experience that seems out of place in a market filled with many slick, feature-rich, multi-platform services. If the hype over Spotify teaches us anything, it's that a music service needs to be an incredibly well designed product. Clutter doesn't work.

The one thing Qtrax has going for it is that it's free. But if it ever launches, and there have been false starts before, will free be enough to make is succeed? (CNET, Wired)

Virgin May Change Proposed Download Model
-- Virgin Media's head of music says its never-launched music service may launch with a more contemporary streaming model and not the unlimited download model the company originally touted. "Users' desire to cache tracks and listen to them on the go, that outdates the unlimited download model to a degree," said Richard Wheeler at FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference in London.

As MusicWeek points out, the unlimited download model can be a tough sell. Virgin Media had hoped to launch a service that offered unlimited, DRM-free downloads. That was apparently a tough sell to rights holders. Nokia's disappointing attempt, Comes With Music, is an unlimited download model with tethered tracks and a cost bundled into the price of the handset. That has been a tough sell to consumers. (MusicWeek)

Coca-Cola Targeting Teens With Music
-- Coca-Cola is using music to go after the teen market in a big way. One-third of the world's population will be younger than 18 by 2020, according to Coke's math. To reach its stated goal of reaching $200 billion in sales by 2020, it will need those consumers.

Coco-Cola Music will kick off on March 22 with an event called "24hr Session" with Maroon 5 (perhaps not the first band that comes to mind when you think of the teen market). The band will go into a studio for 24 hours for fans to watch online and engage with the band. A day after going into the studio, the band comes out with a new song.

Singer Taio Cruz and the British band One Night Only are also part of the promotion. One Night Only has written and recorded a new song called "Can You Feel It Tonight" that will be used in a global ad spot from Wieden & Kennedy, Amsterdam. Cruz will work on a new song with artists selected by consumers in various markets.(AdAge)