CloudTrade has announced that music from its first two label deals is now available for trading on its mobile file-sharing network.
Users can trade about 250 songs from CloudTrade’s label partners: ATO Records (Radiohead’s U.S. CD distributor) and the jam-band-friendly Sci Fidelity Records.
We’ve been tracking CloudTrade since February, when we got our first glance at its application for letting users share music for free via smartphone in return for watching video ads or playing games with a company logo as the songs download. (The video to the right shows CloudTrade in action.)
"Our market research taught us a valuable lesson in dealing with thenext generation of music consumers," said CloudTrade CEO Raj Kanapur. "Wherever possible, we mustleverage advertisers’ desire to be in front of consumers on interactivemobile devices and offer a fully ad-supported free model of digitalmusic downloading."
Our hands-on test of the service last month confirmed what Kanapur first showed us: His application works, and it could offer music fans — especially young ones with more time than money — a great new way to discover, share and listen to music without messing around with a computer or a credit card. CloudTrade is looking for up to 10,000 people to participate in the beta test of its smartphone app, which allows users to trade songs with each other through a mobile social network.
As with Qtrax, another free and legal P2P service we’ve been tracking, the major barrier (once the technology hasbeen figured out) is sign-off from music copyright holders. CloudTradehas made strides in this area with two new label deals.
Kanapur says that unlike Qtrax, his company needs only to sign deals with labels because its songs are considered standard downloads by copyrightholders. Essentially, CloudTrade can pay compulsory mechanicalroyalties without striking a separate deal with publishers.
ATO Records has made music from its four top artists (Ben Kweller, Gomez, The Whigs and Rodrigo y Gabriela) available on the service, while Sci Fidelity Records unleashed its entire catalog of jam-bandmusic (from The Disco Biscuits, the Greyboy Allstars, Umphrey’s McGeeand others). In total, CloudTrade now offers about 250 songs for usersto trade on its mobile file-sharing social network.
Major-label music could be on the horizon for CloudTrade. Kanapursaid Universal Music Group sent over a term sheet, but thatnegotiations with the label — the largest in the world — are ongoing. A spokesman for CloudTrade said other content partner agreements couldbe finalized shortly.
In order to use CloudTrade in a mobile capacity, you need a Windows Mobile-based smartphone, although the company says it will add support for BlackBerries andnon-Windows smartphones. If your smartphone runs something besidesWindows Mobile, you can still use the service by creating a free 50-MB CloudTrade account for use from your computer. Once the applicationbecomes available for your phone, you can register it with a textmessage to increase your account’s capacity to 1 GB.
Hint: In order to find these artists’ music on CloudTrade, register for an account and then go to My CloudTrade. Click Search the Skies in the Find New Content section, choose Music from the search menu, click the Artist button and then search for the artists you’re looking for. (General searches on the site do not currently bring up these music files.)
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