Red faces all around as major labels say Qtrax who?

Oh dear, it’s foot in mouth syndrome for Qtrax.

Just this morning we reported that a new online music store would be putting iTunes in it’s place by offering free music to users.

The service works by centralizing music from P2P sites and then reoffering the songs with some extra DRM attached. Songs are downloaded to the listener’s computer, but they can only be played back inside of the Qtrax ad-supported player.

Anyway, enough of how it works (read all about it here). The company promised to share ad revenue with the song owners and claimed that deals have been made with the four major record labels : Universal Music, Sony-BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI. Sharp as a tack our own Mark Raby added, “Interestingly enough, those labels haven’t yet confirmed any plans.”

Lo and behold, Warner, EMI and Universal all say they have not licensed their music with Warner saying it "has not authorised the use of our content on Qtrax’s recently-announced service". Ooh er.

Whoops.

Qtrax said 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.

Qtrax president Allan Klepfisz said that, while a deal with Warner had not been signed, he expected terms to be agreed "shortly".

"With everyone else, we have agreed on all terms," but added that in some cases deals had yet to be signed. We do worry about the kind of people who announce this kind of thing prematurely.

Well, we’ll see. Watch this space.

Read the full story at the BBC.