Released today, the company “Qtrax” released their much anticipated application out as beta. There has been much talk about this program mainly because it offers it’s users “free and legal” music downloads. It also claims to have support from major labels. As of today, Warner Music Group Corp. actually released a press release claiming that it in fact does not support its company in its efforts. The deals with the other four major labels are still in the works, but their actually status’ have not been published. Come on, after what the RIAA has been doing, is it really possible for something like this to exist? To see what the hype is all about, Pikism.com took the initiative to give the program a test drive!
For one, this program is completely, if not identical to an application called ‘Songbird.’ I mean yes it says Powered by Songbird on the bottom, but it’s just way too identical.
To top things off, right when starting the application, the main page has trouble loading (music.qtrax.com)? I would think that I could expect to at least see the main page loading without timing out. After pressing Try Again a few times, the page partially loads and I can see from the top that there are currently 5506 Online Users and 9,695,469 Qtrax tracks?
Well after finally loading, I am greeted with the startup page (finally!). Much to my surprise, the page contains artists that are mainstream in the music industry. I click on Chris Brown, but oh wait, I’m going to have to wait another 5 minutes for the page to load, and later find out that it’s going to timeout again. Argh!
Well, unfortunately we’ve come to the conclusion of this blog post and that is, Qtrax really doesn’t live up to what it says. Based on what other websites are saying as well, these “free and legal” downloads are still coming soon. So much for the hype! We’ll keep you all posted.
UPDATE @ 12:27 pm (EST): We took a test drive later on in the day, much to our surprise, the page still doesn’t load. But wait! The artist page doesn’t even exist anymore, a 404 error. Try going to the front page, you’ll be greeted with an Oracle page now.
Don’t forget to post your comments!
