QTrax Fumbles on the Kickoff by George Ziemann -- January 28, 2008 Early this morning, the big music news was that a company called QTrax had "announced deals with all the major music labels and publishers to offer the first free and legal ad-supported P2P service to include major label music." Good story, except the part about deals with all the major labels turns out to be bullshit. And it gets worse from there. Warner Music was the first to pipe up and say that they hadn't signed any deal with QTrax. Turns out that they haven't actually signed any deals with anyone yet. Evidently, QTrax owners are foolish enough to believe that some sort of verbal agreement constitutes striking a deal. Maybe in civilized society, but this is the record business we're talking about. The other, more likely, possibilities are that QTrax decided to load the first line of their announcement with bullshit because a) they think we're all so stupid no one will notice, b) they think it's the truth, c) they knew that the bullshit would get talked about, giving their story some more mileage, or d) they're just idiots. We need more evidence. QTrax uses WMA files, wrapped in the delicious microsoft brand of DRM. Yum, yum. WMA - Windows Machine Access. These files need a warning label that says, "Virus Seeking Compatible Host." They say the WMA files will work with the iPod "soon," until April 15 but not as the result of any action by Apple. This is, of course, impossible. The iPod plays Apple's format and plain mp3s. It ain't gonna play no WMA files. It shouldn't even play the ones from Amazon, but it definitely won't like the taste of WMA. There's also a claim that the people at QTrax have figured out how to filter out all the crap (spoof files, spyware, malware) that the RIAA and MediaDefender have been spewing onto the Internet. There was something about gold at the end of the rainbow, too. So, as it turns out, the correct answer was E) all of the above. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting real tired of not being able to believe a word that anyone says.