Free legal music downloads. It’s the holy grail for both pirates looking to go legit and misers. Finally it seems to have arrived in the form of QTrax, a silverlight-based free music download service that – perhaps most surprising of all – is available to Australians. There is a pretty big catch though…
That catch is that the song files are only available as DRM-laden WMA files. Ouch.
Because of the DRM restrictions, the music can only be played back on your computer, although because it’s silverlight based, it works on both PCs and Macs. There are no official numbers as to how much music is available through the Qtrax store, but Gus over at Lifehacker managed to find a few issues like missing songs from albums and ‘buy now’ options sending users to the Amazon music store, a useless option for Australians.
But despite all that, it’s a free service that offers a heap of music legally and free to Australians. With the country’s history of dragging their feet at every opportunity for legal consumption of media, Qtrax is an interesting proposition that could potentially be great.
Now the question is: Will you use it?
[QTrax via Lifehacker]
Slimmeh
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 4:41 PMDRM? Then no.
RufusLives
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 4:49 PMI’ll check this out, but with the increase of both music streaming services and internet download caps having to download DRM’d tracks seems almost antiquated.
At best guess I’ll be sticking to Grooveshark once my Music Unlimited trail period has expired.
Barry
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 4:49 PMDRM isn’t a major thing, it can be hacked (but I didn’t say that)
Sicarius123
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 5:00 PMI listen to music through my PS3 and Phone, so no, I’ll continue to just buy CD’s because I can’t be bothered pirating anymore and there is no good way of buying music online in Australia.
We’re pretty much dominated by the rip off that is Australian iTunes, which is for no real reason more expensive than US iTunes, and I can usually beat their price with JB Hi-Fi’s special price within a couple of weeks of launch netting myself a hard copy, letting me rip it however I want and be able to re-rip it without trying to work out which online music store I purchased it from, or if I’ve used all my allowable downloads.
Liam Johnson
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 5:17 PMI like actually owning my CDs, so no. DRM just makes it worse.
Sunny Kalsi
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 6:09 PMWhat’s the point of DRM? If it’s free doesn’t it just mean you can create infinite free accounts to use wherever and listen to whatever?
Troy MacDonald
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 7:33 PMI still probably wont use this. After doing a course in sound/music technology, ive found I much prefer the quality of CDs to mp3s and therefore prefer to own a legit hard copy (mainly to listen to in the car). I would only use this service if I had a batch DRM remover
Simon Reidy
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 10:31 PMDRM = no.
mbryant
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 11:23 PMThe other big catch: Silverlight. Ugh.
Wesley
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 12:27 AMDRM is not an issue, because it’s free. It’s there to compensate the artists. You will be able to soon transfer the music to portable devices, according to Qtrax. The DRM just means they want to be able to keep track of the downloads- it it not limiting your ability to play the tunes. I’m excited about it!
Jeff
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 1:37 PMActually if the device doesn’t support Silverlight, the DRM renders the track useless. Just sayin’ bro.
Wesley
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 1:56 PMIf they are wma files… and their licenses are for portability, and they say portability coming soon… not sure where you guys are getting the idea that you won’t be able to play them on many devices. Guess we just have to wait and see. They apparently are uploading 10′s of thousands of tracks a day, so if they are from Universal, Sony, Emi, or others, chances are they will be there soon. Keep an eye out, I’d say!
David Wyndham
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 2:05 AMI checked them out a couple of years back (Think I used a Canadian proxy) and found a poor catalog. However on seeing this article I have looked again and I must say that the catalog has imporved. Kev Carmody and Blueline Medic, two names I use to see how well a catalog does in finding more obscure music.
That said, I would only use this for music I can’t get elsewhere, as I can’t play it on any of my portable players.
David Wyndham
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 2:12 AMSeems I spoke too soon. The tracks all say “coming soon” when you hover over the download link. Useless.
badboy
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 11:06 PMI don’t kick a gift horse in the mouth,free,legal music anywhere is cool by me.I think the service is great and needs the support of artists and music fans alike.I’ll give it a chance to see where Qtrax goes from here,if the music plays on my computer and /or mobile device then drm means nothing to me.
Deev
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 10:43 AMhttp://www.guvera.com (Australian) does something similar except I don’t remember seeing DRM. It’s advertising supported though…