ANOTHER P2P FILE-SHARING SITE EMERGES

Ad-supported P2P site Qtrax has inked licensing arrangements with all four major label groups, according to published reports.

Qtrax owner Brilliant Technologies is about to hit the market with a free P2P site, and a possible IPO to follow.

The company has been steadily licensing major recording and publishing divisions, and will soon offer the catalog within its advertising platform.

"Consumers clearly aren't willing to pay for music, but advertisers are the one group that still will," said Brilliant Technologies chief executive Allan Klepfisz.

The public offering plan involves a tie-up with Flooring Zone, an entity that will serve as a shell company for the IPO.

The Qtrax announcement follows the high-profile flop of SpiralFrog, another ad-supported initiative. Despite much media hoopla last summer, the venture may never make it to market. Several sources involved in major label negotiations note that multi-million dollar payments are frequently required to secure big-name catalogs.

Prospects for ad-supported downloads remain an experiment very much in progress. Dooming prospects is a structure that relies on protected content and forced advertising views, a step down from the free-for-all file-sharing that marked Napster at its peak, and currently popular, though illicit sites like Limewire and BitTorrent.