the days of free music being legal are coming

Music file-sharing service Qtrax is about to hit the market with catalogs of all the 4 major record labels. Not only that, Qtrax will be traded publicly under a shell company called Flooring Zone.

Qtrax will have access to between 20 million and 30 million copyrighted songs at launch in October. Some sources claim that Qtrax could be considered a legitimate threat to Apple's iTunes, which only features 5 million songs, but also a better economic proposition as well (record labels collect about 70 cents on each iTunes sale).

Qtrax has the support of the four major record labels - EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group

More than 5 billion songs were swapped on peer-to-peer sites last year while CD sales, the industry's core revenue-producing product, continue to decline, dropping about 20 percent this year alone. According to a recent report from Jupiter Research, things are only going to get worse.

"Consumers clearly aren't willing to pay for music, but advertisers are the one group that still will,"? said Brilliant Technologies CEO Allan Klepfisz, who added that Internet advertising is growing at a 30 percent clip per year. (NY Post)

Qtrax's initial revenue projections range from a low of $20 million to a high of $175 million. Record labels will get an equal split of advertising revenue in addition to the royalty fees it collects from Qtrax.