That's right: Qtrax told the world (and got the world + dog) to believe that it had signed deals with the four major music labels for its peer-to-peer ad-supported music distribution deal. Reuters carried it, and (it being a Sunday - you have to know how these things work) many of the papers picked it up, threw it across the room to whoever was unlucky enough to be working on Sunday and said "Do us 900 words on that, would you - future of music, finally legal, that sort of thing."
Which duly appeared.
And now the LA Times, doing the due diligence thing, has found that no, there were no deals. Not that it can unearth, anyhow. Hence the, oh, minor correction in the navel of that story:
FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this story said that the four major record companies had agreed to license their digital catalogs to the online service Qtrax. That is not true of Universal Music Group, EMI Group and Warner Music Group, executives with those labels say. It is unclear as to whether there is such a deal with Sony-BMG Music entertainment. Qtrax officials insist the website has agreements with all four.
Listen, they can't both be right. And since the Qtrax service isn't happening at the moment, I think I know which I'm going with.
And since you're still here reading, could I just point out that Wippit has [dammit!] had an entirely legal P2P file-sharing music model, sans advertising, since about 1999. Caution: may contain music by people you have actually heard of. And exist.
(Note: I have created an "Undo" category. It seemed essential.)
