AfterDawn: Tech news

Qtrax launches with just a few songs but lots of headaches

Written by Rich Fiscus @ 19 Jun 2008 11:24 User comments (2)

Qtrax launches with just a few songs but lots of headaches It's official. Qtrax, arguably the most infamous music service ever (even before they ever offered a download) has finally launched. That's the good news. If all you were looking for is good news now would be a good time to stop reading.
The rest of the story is "launch" may be too strong a word for what Qtrax has acoomplished so far. While it's possible to find a few albums, there don't appear to be any that are complete. From what I was able to find the content appears to be solely from Universal Music Group (UMG) despite the recent announcement of a deal to offer EMI's music.

After a searching for a short time I was eventually able to find some songs to download. The process went smoothly enough until I tried to play them. The Qtrax player gave me an error saying it needed to be re-installed. Being naturally skeptical I double checked by trying to play it with Windows Media Player. It turned out I needed to upgrade Windows Media Player and install some additional hotfixes from Microsoft.



After getting through all that I was finally able to reach the point where the Qtrax client would no longer give me errors when I tried to play a song. Unfortunately it didn't actually play the songs either. Windows Media Player, on the other hand, had no problems. After uninstalling and re-installing twice, and being assured each time by the installer that there was an old version of Qtrax still on my computer, I finally got the songs to play - most of the time. Occasionally I get an error that it can't connect to the license server.

The bottom line is Qtrax has a long way to go before it's ready to be anybody's music service of choice. Between the limited music selection and frequent DRM related errors you'll end up with more frustration than music. Playback is certainly smoother with Windows Media Player, but since Qtrax gives you files with names like 'UMG_audtrk_00602498695678_01_013_906.wma' you'll also want to use WMP's Library feature if you want to find a particular song.

Previous Next  

2 user comments

120.6.2008 12:02

qtrax is a great concept, i hope they fix thos bugs, msot ppl won't install twice, update ...etc

221.6.2008 12:46

When I tried this back in January, they were using Songbird as the core, with an Oracle 10g application server. The software setup was so bad, just running the install got me to their server. DIRECTLY to their server. If this keeps up, they're going to lose whatever startup capital and agreements they had.

Comments have been disabled for this article.

Latest news

Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets (06 Jun 2023 9:19)
Roomba Combo j7+ is the very first Roomba model to combine robot vacuum with mopping features. And Roomba Combo j7+ does all that with a very clever trick, which tackles the problem with mopping and carpets. But is it any good? We found out.
Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations (02 May 2023 3:38)
Neato Robotics has ceased its operations. American robot vacuum pioneer founded in 2005 has finally called it quits and company will cease its operations and sales. Only a skeleton crew will remain who will keep the servers running until 2028.
5 user comments
How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp (20 Mar 2023 1:25)
The world's most popular messaging platform, Meta-owned WhatsApp has enabled sending messages to yourself. While at first, this might seem like an odd feature, it can be very useful in a lot of situations. ....
18 user comments
How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller (11 Feb 2023 1:04)
Google shut down its streaming game service Stadia late last month and this means that some people have Stadia controllers lying around that seem to be of no use. That is fortunately not the ....
2 user comments
Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account (26 Jan 2023 2:14)
Sharing a Netflix account with a person in a different location is possible and indeed very common, although the company doesn't necessarily enjoy this behavior from their customers. However, ....

News archive