Free music. Hmm... OK. Time for the skeptic to step up to the plate...
SpiralFrog is going to be ad supported, and that's fine. No problem here with a few ads. Qtrax is going to be ad supported. No problem there with a few ads.
But now we've got this proprietary technology issue. Will I need a different player? Will SDKs be made available for other hardware and software MP3 player manufacturers and publishers to allow that ad supported music to play in other players? What's the format going to be? Will it play elsewhere?
Qtrax is nothing new and the company has been around for a long time (in Internet years it's ancient dating all the way back to 2000). But there's still nothing showing. No downloads are available either for the Qtrax P2P client or for music. Well, not from their web site anyways. You can download it from some other download sites, but links to their site are broken. I did manage to find v1.0.6 available, but that's from 2002 and a little bit old now and doesn't work. Here's a screen shot of it:
They're in v5.0 now, though you can't have it :) It looks very ho-hum from the screen shots at their web site, and there's nothing outstanding about it other than the proprietary MPQ format that offers "MP3 quality". Oh. Yeah. I'm rejoicing. I'm thrilled. Yippee. Can't you tell I'm so excited... Barf.
It just sounds like more shitware to me. MP3 is ok, but nothing special. There are far superior audio compression formats available. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much though as it's supposed to be free. Still, if I'm going to install more software, I'd probably want a good reason. 3Hz is a good reason. 20Hz isn't a good reason. Well, if you love bass that is.
The question remains whether MPQ will be available as an SDK for integration with other players. If not, it will be hard for them to gain traction as I'm not overly excited about using any MP3 software other than those that I use already. Heck - how many players do I have to have installed?
The Qtrax player (v5 that is) will also play MP3s and WMAs. Huh? For a general purpose player that's pretty poor. They're going to have to do better than that to make their player worthwhile.
While SpiralFrog looks like it's going to be pretty much the same thing, they have no information available about their software or anything. It'll be available in December 2006 though. So we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully they've got some better software and a better solution than Qtrax.
As it stands, I'm not seeing anything really compelling in either of these. It sounds like they'll be anchored to the PC with proprietary software. That's not too bad, but I'd really like to get the music onto my MP3 player hardware. (I've got an iPod Nano.)
But it doesn't look like we'll have many choices at the moment. But that's what I want - I want my music where I want it.
There are already a lot of bands out there with some fantastic music and they're giving it away for free. It's all over the place. I just downloaded a bunch more music today and yesterday - all for free and all legally. Heck - I've made music available for free at the ALTools site. It's everywhere. And it's portable so it will play wherever I want to play it.
What's needed is an open RFP that defines how to get the job done right. That would allow anyone to create an implementation and the music could then be played anywhere and not just in proprietary players.
If it comes down to an existing format, I'd have to say that while it may be a close race between AAC and WMA, WMA is the way to go. AAC is tied down in licensing issues and Microsoft makes WMA available for free. WMA also has better sound. Not much of a contest.
All this stuff just isn't that hard to do. What is lacking is any hint of motivation from the music industry to do things right, i.e. An open standard that ensures the artists get paid.
Cheers,
Ryan