NEW YORK — I’m not naive enough to think I can truly get something for nothing. But I did hope that Qtrax — a recently launched service offering free, legal song downloads — would come close without costing me dearly in frustration. Sadly, I was wrong.
Qtrax initially began as a peer-to-peer file-sharing service in 2002 after the shutdown of Napster, the trailblazing program that let people illegally copy songs stored on others’ computers. Qtrax shut down a few months later to avoid potential legal issues, though.
Returning to the scene after the death of a similar service, SpiralFrog, Qtrax now has one big thing going for it that its predecessor never achieved: The support of all the major recording labels, who are letting it offer music junkies millions of high-quality, gratis songs. The site gets money from advertising.
It’s too bad that the service is hampered by confusing, cluttered desktop software that can make it difficult to find the songs you crave.
Qtrax — whose name stems from the idea of queuing up music tracks — does have many songs in its growing catalog, and they download rapidly. While there were plenty of times when I searched for songs and was thwarted by Qtrax’s “Coming Soon” button, I found loads of tracks from artists new and old, popular and obscure. Want to download the latest Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs? Qtrax has them. Itching to snag old tracks from Spanish ’60s rock group Los Bravos? With Qtrax, you’re in luck.
Even when I couldn’t find that many songs by artists I like (and I could usually download at least a few), Qtrax would serve up a short list of related artists that sometimes offered good alternative suggestions.
Not surprisingly, the songs are all Windows Media Files shackled with digital-rights management, or DRM, copy-protection technology. Qtrax said that is used to count how many times a song is played, so the company can compensate artists and other rights holders.
This means that playback is currently limited to the computer on which you download songs. Qtrax plans to allow songs to be transferred to various cell phones and music devices — initially excluding iPods — in about a month. It also expects to make the currently PC-only service compatible with Mac and Linux computers.
Sounds OK so far, right? Well, yes, but to get and play any songs you have to use Qtrax’s problematic software (and you have to make sure you have some free Microsoft software, including Windows Media Player 11).
When I opened the Qtrax program I was greeted by a home page swamped with lists like “Top Artists,” “Top Albums,” “Top Songs,” “Top Searches,” “Most Recent Downloads” and numerous links that help you search, create playlists and join various music-related groups. Nestled among all this is a constantly rotating block showing images of featured artists.
Navigating Qtrax is headache-inducing in part because pages are packed to the gills with lists and information, and sometimes divided into two pieces — three if you have your music library pane open on the left side — yielding several scroll bars.
For example, a search for glam rock-inspired pop tunes by Lady GaGa produced a main page listing information like album titles and related artists. Below that sat a scrollable list of tracks that you can download, rate, add to a playlist or — if you’re not into tracks with DRM — buy from Amazon.com’s music download store.
This mass of information and links is further complicated by the music playback controls that sit at the top of the Qtrax window, just on top of the program’s Web address bar (yes indeed, the software also functions as a Web browser, so if you click on an ad it will open as a new tab).
I appreciate efforts at packing lots of information and features into a single package, but Qtrax offers way too much.
Ultimately Qtrax has two main redeeming elements: A wealth of music, and a simple playback feature. You can view songs by album cover, see a big list of all your songs, or make a filtered list showing songs in certain categories. You can also make playlists and add other MP3s you already have and tunes you’ve bought from Apple’s iTunes Store.
That’s nothing special, but after all the clutter on the rest of the service, it’s a welcome change. And besides, if you’re using Qtrax, chances are you really just want to hear some tunes.
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