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Universal Music Group is joining the ranks of music companies who are giving away their music for free and in a legal way. The company has announced that it has reached an agreement with file-sharing site Qtrax to offer free, legal downloads of all its digital music. If you would recall, Qtrax announced sometime in January that it has the support of “all major music labels” in its revenue generating ads music download service. But some of this music companies denied Qtrax’s claim, including UMG. Prior to these events, Qtrax was forced to shut down its service a few months after it was launched in 2002 to avoid some legal troubles.

But that has all ended now, and Qtrax is more confident that with UMG’s support, their music sharing site would not encounter anymore problem. UMG spokesperson Peter Lofrumento confirmed that there was indeed an agreement between UMG and Qtrax. While Qtrax spokeswoman Shamin Abas told the Associated Press that all of UMG’s digital music well be available for free, legal downloads on Qtrax. Both companies gave the assurance that the musicians responsible for the digital music will be appropriately compensated for the use of their content. What is uncertain though is how they will be compensated for their work.

Two questions remain to be answered now though. Will these arrangement bring in enough revenues for both companies, considering that the service will rely on ads that will be running along the Qtrax file sharing site? And what prompted UMG to enter into such an agreement considering that it was one of those music labels who denied Qtrax’s statement that it has support for its free music downloading site?

Read [Yahoo! News]

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