It was billed as the “second coming” for the music industry, but it turned out that the offer of an unlimited supply of songs downloaded free turned out to be little more than a sham.

QTrax, a start-up website, spent an estimated £500,000 carpet-bombing Cannes over the weekend to promote its revolutionary service. Briefly, it convinced the world that it had signed up major record companies to create an online catalogue of 25 million songs.

But once the lights had dimmed on the glittering launch party, it emerged that none of the world’s four music majors had actually signed up to the site, leaving QTrax with almost none of the 25 million songs it had promised.

There are now doubts over exactly when, or if, QTrax will be available.

Warner Music was the first to sound the alarm, stunned to discover that its name was being linked with the service after QTrax intimated at a press conference that it had deals “with the major labels”. Although Warner was in discussions with QTrax, which is led by Allan Klepfisz, a flamboyant Australian, it has never seen a working version of the website.

The US music group told QTrax that it could say only that it was “in talks” about a possible deal, but material produced by QTrax included an endorsement quote from an executive at the company that was nearly two years old. Several other endorsements from major record label executives were up to 15 months old.

Even against that backdrop, QTrax was confident enough to take over the music industry’s annual business convention in Cannes, hosting parties with LL Cool J and Don Henley from The Eagles in an atmosphere reminiscent of the heady days of the dotcom boom. James Blunt was paid £40,000 to endorse the site, performing a midnight concert in the ballroom of the five-star Carlton hotel on Sunday. At that event, QTrax held a packed press conference, at which it allowed reporters attending to get the message that all the major labels were participating in its 25 million song service – a catalogue that would have dwarfed the 6 million on Apple’s iTunes.

That boast began to unravel as reporters checked with the major labels. By yesterday QTrax could not sustain the pretence, as Sony BMG and Warner both officially denied signing up. Universal Music and the British company EMI also confirmed that their recorded music divisions had not reached a deal. It is understood that discussions between QTrax and all four are continuing. The British company, EMI Music Publishing, however, confirmed that it had signed a deal in August 2006

A spokesman for Sony BMG said: “We have not granted a licence enabling QTrax to lauch the service it has recently announced.”

A music executive, who asked not the be named, said: “It’s incredible. I can’t believe how reckless they were, going to a major industry event, with all those parties and PR, but with no deals.”

An unrepentant Mr Klepfisz insisted yesterday that he had not mas-terminded a PR disaster. “We are not idiots,” he told The Times. “We wouldn’t have launched the service in front of the whole music industry unless we had secured its backing. We feel we have been unfairly crucified because a competitor [unnamed] tried to damage us. Everyone is very upset.”

Conceding that the “ink hadn’t dried” on the deals, he said that Qtrax would deliver on its promises to music fans “within months”. He added: “We do have industry agreements including the major labels. Even today we are working on more deals. We have contracts and licences being finalised but I will never again go public in details about negotiations.”

Mr Klepfisz said that the company server had been unable to cope with the millions of attempts to access free music yesterday as news of the service spread. He insisted that service did work and contains every song available through the Gnutella peer-to-peer filesharing network, a figure claimed to be more than 25 million.

As the full extent of the debacle became clear, James Blunt denied endorsing the website, but said that he was interested to see if the advertising-funded service could help the industry to combat piracy while rewarding artists.

QTrax is part of a small Australian company called Brilliant Technologies, and Mr Klepfisz had raised $25 million (£12.6 million) mainly from investors in Malaysia and Singapore to help to start up his free download service.

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