Every day my inbox receives a news summary known as the Dean’s List, and it seems for every one good-news story for creators and their rights, there are (at least) two bad-news stories. That’s certainly not Dean Kay’s fault, it’s the world we live in, but this week the good-news/bad-news stories have hit the presses simultaneously.

First the good news; I’ll put the bad news in a subsequent post. QTrax, that star-crossed licensed P2P service that got off to a false start at MIDEM earlier this year, has signed a third major label, Sony BMG. Add that to the company’s deals with Universal, EMI and smaller labels, and QTrax, currently in beta mode, could conceivably offer its users millions of songs financed by ad support.

As I have said on panels hosted by the Distributed Computing Industry Association (QTrax is a member) I remain skeptical of ad-supported models but I believe any online service — P2P or not — that seeks to do business legally and generate revenues for artists deserves a shot. I’m speaking at another DCIA event January 7th in Las Vegas on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show; I suspect that will be one of my arguments there as well. (If you’re attending CES be sure to stop by and say hello.)

I don’t know what the terms of the licensing deals are with QTrax by the major labels — Is there a minimum revenue commitment? How long is the contract? Are there works being held back? — but I’m pleased to see the rights holders and QTrax are seeking a market-oriented solution to bring creative works to consumers in a way they’ve demonstrated they like, free through P2P.

Models not so friendly to the creator’s rights in the market — namely LimeWire’s private networks and Jim Griffin’s Choruss — are discussed in the next post.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 11:25 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under advertising, copyright opponents, creators, internet, licensing, market forces, p2p, piracy, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.