Big four music labels deny Qtrax deal

Service now on hold for "a short time"

29 January 2008 8:06 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Qtrax, the free, ad-supported download service, announced over the weekend with much fanfare, is currently on hold.

The site was due to go live on Monday 28th January promising peer-to-peer downloads from a catalogue of 25 million songs from the four major labels, except it turns out that none of the record companies had signed up to the deal.

As we reported on Pocket-lint, Warner Music was the first label to issue a statement that it had not authorised Qtrax to distribute its music.

Sony BMG Music followed, and sources close to Universal and EMI Group have also denied deals.

It seems that the labels all had agreements with Qtrax in the past, when the company was testing a paid music download service, but the contracts had expired and did not cover the scope of the ambitious new scheme.

Qtrax president and chief executive Allan Klepfisz has made a statement saying the launch would be postponed "for a short time".

Claiming that the company does have agreements with "rightholders" he stated: "We believe the exact nature of that support will be publicly clarified within a very short time".