Qtrax Inks Deal With Universal for Legal P2P Music

Qtrax, the ambitious free P2P service that took a PR beating in January when it mistakenly announced it had major-label deals in place, seems to be back on track.

The P2P service made public a legitimate deal with Universal Music Group, the world's largest major label, on Tuesday, a month after announcing publishing pacts with EMI and Sony/ATV. Qtrax also has a deal in place with Universal's publishing group, meaning the company can now legally populate its service with Universal music.

A Qtrax spokeswoman said the company will start adding Universal tracks soon. Peter Lofrumento, Universal Music Group's senior vice president of corporate communications, confirmed the new deal.

Qtrax is an ad-supported, Windows-only P2P application based on the Songbird open-source media player. While Qtrax badly fumbled its initial announcement of major label support, now that Universal has signed on, others could follow suit. If the rest of the majors come on board, Qtrax could be on its way to offering more music than iTunes does, for free.

Currently, only songs from TVT Records are available on Qtrax, said the spokeswoman, with the Beggars Banquet Records and Finetunes catalogs set to become available in the next few weeks. Universal songs should go online at Qtrax in approximately a month, she said.

The service lets users share DRM-protected music. The digital rights management is there to help prevent songs from slipping onto unauthorized networks, but also to establish the play counts Qtrax will use to figure out how much to pay artists, labels and publishers. Ads are displayed during the search and download processes, and users have the option to purchase music and merchandise through the service.

The company's goal is to offer every single one of the 25 million or so songs that are available on file-sharing networks, including live, rare and remixed tracks. As the last few months have shown, the licensing issues surrounding such a scheme present significant difficulties.

A Mac version should be ready by May 18, according to Qtrax.