Soon they'll be giving it away ...

The BBC (carefully monitored by the IPKat's friend Jim Davies) brings news today that record labels Warner, EMI and Universal have denied signing deals allowing their music to feature on the new Qtrax file-sharing service offering unlimited free downloads. Qtrax claimed it would carry up to 30 million tracks from "all the major labels", adding it expected an agreement to be reached with Warner and that terms had been agreed with the others even if deals had not been formally signed.

Meanwhile, online retailer Amazon has announced the international rollout of its digital music store and claims to be the only retailer to offer DRM-free MP3s for the four major record labels as well as thousands of independent record labels.

The poor, confused IPKat decided to avoid Qtrax since he heard a rumour that the "cost" of this free music was that you have to watch quantities of advertising (not his favourite business model). Instead, he went hunting for the Amazon international rollout but, embarrassingly, couldn't find it on the rather busy screen display. Says Merpel, at the rate at which recorded music is being made available, it won't be long before we're all paid by the copyright owners to download it -- at least that's the way things seem to be going.

Free music here