[SpecMode]

And it's called Qtrax. It's Windows only, for now - OS X support is coming in March. 25 million tracks, with EMI, Universal, and Warner on board. No track limits, no "subscription" service, but tracks do contain DRM. Ad-supported, and supposedly the ads are not intrusive (they don't come up every time you play a song, for instance).

Windows beta available for download at midnight, EST. OS X client available on March 18, with some kind of "iPod solution" to be announced in April.

A step in the right direction, certainly...though I'm waiting to see how they handle this on OS X in a couple months.

(This is the correct thread, please don't delete me! I hit "Submit", the connection hung; I hit the stop button, refreshed the forum in another window, the thread didn't show up, so I tried again. Somehow it ended up getting submitted thrice instead of twice; not sure how that happened. At least it didn't ban me this time.)

[atomicbartbeans]

Originally Posted by SpecMode A step in the right direction, certainly...though I'm waiting to see how they handle this on OS X in a couple months.

Why do they need to make an OS X version at all? Macs can run Windows now.

[PKIDelirium]

For people that don't want any Microshit on their Mac.

[colivigan]

They're getting slammed. Bigger web server, stat.

[kieran]

Apparently, they don't have the support of the major labels.

CNN article

They have made statements that they are supported by "all major music labels" and then the actual labels said that they didn't authorize the use of their content.

So, the question is, what's going on?

[kieran]

This is a huge piece of vaporware.

Ars Article

They somehow convinced Reuters and Wired that they had all the contracts in place, but after doing some digging, the LA Times found out that there were no contracts signed.

Why do companies have to lie about shit? Just come out and say that they had difficulty getting contracts signed. But no, they wanted to make it seem as if they had everyone signed up and it was better than iTunes.

They go a ton of publicity for this, but now it should all come crashing down. This company needs to learn a lesson.

[Yonzie]

It seems to me that they *had* contracts (or something close) - on the 'ad-supported with limited number of listens' model.
Then they changed their business model, and any hypothetical deals already made went out the window.

This is, of course, only my interpretation of Ars' interpretation of LA Times' interpretation of what they think may be the facts.