Update: Record companies disown 'free, legal' music site

Three record companies have denied making a deal with a service claiming to offer music legally for free, the BBC reports.

Qtrax had claimed to have the backing EMI, Warner Music and Universal Studios. Copyright owners would be paid through advertising revenues along the lines of a service annouinced last week by the social networking site Last.fm.

Qtrax differs in using peer-to-peer file sharing, which means rare tracks and even user-recorded performances would be made available. The system apparently logs how many times users listen to tracks, and distribute royalties accordingly.

To use it you need to download a client module, which will initially be available only for Windows Vista and XP. The site, at the time of writing, says the beta module will be available from midnight New York time (5am in the UK). A MacOC version will be available on March.