Music file-sharing service Qtrax is about to hit the markets with the blessing - not to mention the catalogs - of all four major record labels, The Post has learned. In a deal expected to be announced today, parent company Brilliant Technologies plans to spin out Qtrax and merge it with an entity called Flooring Zone which will serve as a shell company so that the file-sharing service can be traded publicly....

For years, music labels have been trying to prevent fans from downloading their songs on peer-to-peer filesharing networks. Now, some of them would like to encourage people to listen to music that way — provided they view some advertising first.

"We're going to help monetize themselves through advertising," Kent said of Qtrax. "Everybody has been talking about the advertising model, but there's actually very few people that know how to make that happen. We proved in our time at SpiralFrog, by what we were able to put in place in terms of potential deals, that we knew how to make this happen."

Through this agreement, users of Qtrax will be able to access songs from the SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT catalog of recordings for a predefined number of times. Each time a consumer plays a track, the Qtrax player will also offer fans click-to-buy purchase options.