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13 Unlucky Reasons Why Zaptunes is Bullshit

For those keen to avoid raping and pillaging music from the nearest torrent site, a one-stop shop where unlimited DRM-free music can be bought for next to nothing must be a great attraction. Zaptunes, a new site advertising just that, has been making headlines this week. Trouble is, everything about it is a scam.

A few days ago various news outlets reported on the existence of Zaptunes, a new site offering DRM-free MP3 downloads for $25. Zaptunes claimed to have 8 million tracks available from the Big Four labels and untold others. As a nice introductory offer, Zaptunes offered their services free for 30 days. Nice.

Yesterday Hypebot had an email exchange with Zaptune’s media spokesperson Anand Patel who said that the site’s downloads “had been licensed from the appropriate major and indie labels.” But Zaptunes also says it offers music from The Beatles, an Internet impossibility as we all know.

“We have a contract with Sony Music, who hold the rights to most of the Beatles music,” said Patel. “I am sorry, but right now I can not give you more details about this contract.”

That’s because there is no contract and Mr Patel is mistaking people for fools. Here’s a short list of 13 unlucky reasons why (be sure to check out number 12 especially) and feel free to add more in the comments, there are dozens.

1. Zaptunes.com claims to be a San Francisco, CA based start-up. “With about $5 million in funding from various Venture Capitalists, we have steadily grown and made a strong foothold in the music industry,” they claim.

In fact, Zaptunes appeared just a few weeks ago on July 19th and despite $5 million in funding still begged people on Twitter to advertise for them with a tempting $10,000 prize due to be paid out August 22nd. No winners yet? We are surprised….

Tip: Try speaking to the press Zaptunes, they advertise your product for free….

2. Zaptunes isn’t confident that they’ll be around long. They registered their domain on July 19th 2010 – it expires on the same date next year. There’s stability for you.

3. Even though TheBeatles Twitter account with 109,000 followers follows the Zaptunes Twitter account, that doesn’t mean Zaptunes is legit, it just means people are keeping an eye on them. Zaptunes says it offers Beatles tracks. It does not.

4. Zaptunes promotes the availability of Eminem tracks, even though it has none. Zaptunes copied its entire Eminem fact page from an article they found using Google.

Their latest blog post was ripped from Last.fm and the one below that is ripped from MusicByDay. In fact, none of their posts are their own work.

Last.fm content is very popular on Zaptunes – it seems that much of the album art is ripped from there.

5. Other dodgy domains connect to Zaptunes.com including CaptainSam.com, which was registered by Tarandeep Singh Gill living at the rather official sounding 1 Something Road, Some City, California 94127. Even more reassuring is the Zaptunes.co.tv domain which also links to ZapTunes.com and is registered to ‘person surname’ living in ‘londra, GB’ – wherever that is.

6. Zaptunes says it offers tracks for free from the major labels. Anyone with any knowledge of the Big Four know full well that they never, ever give their music away en masse.

7. Zaptunes says it has a unique business model which enables it to offer unlimited downloads. None of the big labels together agree to unlimited downloads on a download service at any price.

8. Zaptunes’ search engine suggests they offer both unreleased tracks and a selection of bootlegs. The major labels love this kind of thing from their partners.

9. Despite all the claims, Zaptunes doesn’t offer ANY music whatsoever. From its own site:

ZapTunes.com does not provide any downloads from its servers. ZapTunes.com just enables its members to find free or paid music available on the Internet. The Artists/Tracks displayed on the home page and other parts of the website are for promotional purposes only and may not be available for free or paid download.

ZapTunes.com has a database of websites that offer free and legal music downloads. Whenever a registered members looks for a song, ZapTunes searches for that song in the database, and if it finds a website offering a legal download of that song, it is displayed it to the user. If not, then ZapTunes looks for that song on Amazon, iTunes and various other paid to download websites, and displays the user their options. ZapTunes is not helping or promoting piracy in any way.

10. ZapTunes says its name is a registered trademark. Our searches with the United States Patent and Trademark Office drew a big blank.

11. Most of the site’s Privacy Policy was cut-and-pasted from here and the ‘Terms of Use‘ on ZapTunes should be read very, very closely. Anyone giving over their credit card details could be in for a very nasty surprise. DON’T DO IT!

12. Another URL that redirects to Zaptunes is www.24hfunds.com. Readers of this discussion thread on TalkGold will see that by page 6, the scheme promoted by its owner was deemed to be a scam. A search on Google for ’24hfunds and scam’ turned up 5,000 results.

13. Those unlucky enough to have given their details over already will see charges on their credit card account from TrackYourPics.com – the following is currently displayed on their site, spelling errors intact:

“Did you see a charge on your credit card with TRACKYOURPICS.COM? It is because you either signed up on trackyourpics.com or ZapTunes.com. All the subscriptions have been cancelled, so you will not see any furher charges on your credit card. Also, we are in the process or reversing the charges already made.”

TrackYourPics is registered to an address in San Francisco, California. Google seems to think that location is a drain cover.

A fitting place for Zaptunes. Stay well away.

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  • http://www.eZee.se www.eZee.se

    Never heard of them, but really good article TF, give yourself a pat on the back from all of us here and also for a lot of folk who you probably saved now and down the road.

    (Damn! That’s a lot of pats!)

    Good job!

  • Anonymous

    Hahaha I’ve never heard of them either but i will note to avoid them! Also i liked the post title ;)

  • Anon

    Good one! :P

  • Ruslan Almukhametov

    Londra, GB Means London in Turkish

  • Anonymous

    Good investigative journalism.

    TorrentFreak hasn’t lost its touch.

  • http://realitybytes88.wordpress.com

    Great post. I’ll make sure to stick well clear.

  • Duane

    $5mn in funding is nowhere near enough capital to license the majors’ catalogues. It would take twice that just to license music from one of the majors, as they need you to pre-pay a huge deposit. The majors’ system is designed to stop start-ups like Zaptunes from operating, so it’s no wonder Zaptunes isn’t within the law.

    That said, I doubt Zaptunes even tried. They really are just a scam.

  • Internator

    Zaptunes made for carding.

  • Noanon

    Nice work TF. Though you may have jumped to conclusions over the address 1 Something Road, Some City, California 94127,I’ve been to Some City i the US.
    P.S. If anybody would like some unicorned beef,drop me a line with your credit card details. Hurry while stocks last :)

  • loch ness troll

    shit! thanks tf i was actually looking at their site earlier today.

  • Anonymous

    I’m sticking to torrent, it’s safer :D

  • Anonymous

    Haven’t heard of it, just stick to torrentz

  • Ninja

    LOL. I haven’t stumbled upon this site but if I had I’d take it as a big April’s fool joke. All you can eat for a fixed price with the bless from the big labels? Sorry pal, there are things that ain’t happening unless the big labels themselves die.

    Heh, gave me a good laugh =)

  • Hickster

    Ummm Enigmax, you said bullshit!

  • Hickster

    Ummm Enigmax, you said bullshit!

    Good article……. again

  • Jimmy

    Even if this place delivered what they promised, what.cd is still a better place for music.

  • Anonymous

    “TrackYourPics is registered to an address in San Francisco, California. Google seems to think that location is a drain cover.”

    That explains it all! These guys are sewer mutants, gathering funding for their revolution. That drain cover is probably pretty close to the Planet Express headquarters. :)

  • Searinox

    Regarding point 5. “londra, GB”… presumably it means London. “Londra” is the Romanian spelling of London. I wonder…

  • Anonymous

    “ZapTunes.com does not provide any downloads from its servers. ZapTunes.com just enables its members to find free or paid music available on the Internet. The Artists/Tracks displayed on the home page and other parts of the website are for promotional purposes only and may not be available for free or paid download.”

    LOL

  • Anonymous

    Also their CEO is called John Stewart who is on the Daily Show, even more lols. Shut these guys down.

  • ahem

    @17

    The ninja turtles are revolting. Notify the authorities if you see a giant brain living inside a body or a human/mutant fly attempting to kidnap illegal immigrants to use for his experiments.

  • Tom

    @18 Exactly what I was thinking!

  • Anand Patel

    U dirty pig kisser you, we have good site for music beatles and music! U shud not be saying lies! We r gud companey and u are lieing liers!

  • lol

    @23 You expect us to believe you when you type like a 9 year old on a cell phone? I also thought that Paul Mcartney sold his Beatles rights to Apple, making Sony and Apple the rights holders to different songs Sony owning the ones Michael Jackson had previously owned

  • 55523

    good article , ill stick to torrents or searching the mp3 thru google and adding ” download” or ” mp3″ to the end of the search term for music.

  • sup

    >“Londra” is the Romanian spelling of London.

    Alright, guys, we’ve got a lead! :D

  • Comeoncomcast (aka Andrew)

    Id just like to say since nobody has noticed. It says ‘raping and pillaging music from the nearest torrent site’

    So I rape Music. I rape Music from Torrent sites all over the Internet thanks enigmax. <3

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  • Aaron

    lol nice work Sherlock

  • me

    If you contact them by email phone or mail then the tems and conditions say that they can use any data you give them in any way they see fit…

    (disguised in the section about testimonials)

  • Spind

    No idea that this site even existed.

    Thanks for the heads up.

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  • lol

    sounds quality.. il be handing over my credit card number at once!

  • seeker

    yeah zaptunes is complete bull. if u really want free quality music head over to http://www.sharktorrents.com

  • Anonymous

    good stuff enigmax, lol’d hard at the drain cover.

  • Booger Bender

    Hmm I wonder what would happen if a Deaf guy enrolls into the trial?
    If the Deaf guy gets scammed imagine the lawsuit on that lol
    One Deaf guy would take that whole joke down in a heartbeat.

  • jj

    A suite in a hotel. How nice.

  • TestCords

    Judging from the names, it’s two Indian guys trying to pull a scam. The reason they can’t write the content themselves is because “India English” sounds pretty off to native speakers and their game would be up. It sounds like the entire site is bullshit from beginning to end.

    But if the “investment” is only a hundred USD or so, then they can probably make a fair bit pretty quick.

    Reminds me of that Russian site “allofmp3″. At least that was legit… in Russia.

  • mike

    well done, some internet savvy 15yo has worked out he can try his luck to make some cash. you cant blame him, it happens everyday. its nice that torrent freak told us about him, he gonna get a right spanking when he gets caught. poor thing. lol.

  • Ali

    Reason #2 is weak. Many domains are auto registered yearly.
    However, good job on outing another scam site. Spread the word.

  • Gargamel

    I’m on What & Waffles. Why would I pay? Legit or not. LOL.

  • ko

    Londra is London

  • Dia

    google: torrentfreak + scam – 29 600 hits

  • brian

    The title for this article is awesome.

  • elduka

    LOL points 13 and 9 were hilarious

  • Anonymous

    “All the subscriptions have been cancelled, so you will not see any furher charges on your credit card.”

    Spot the spelling mistakes:
    cancelled (canceled)
    furher (further)

  • hmmm

    the site appears to be registered to a Reginald Hutchinson @ 88 Howard Street in San Fran. which appears to be an apartment building.

    site is registered thru a registrar called Dynadot. TOS for most registrars require that there is accurate info in the whois under penalty of site suspension or termination.

    if these are scam sites, why not contact the registrar pushing for accurate contact info so those that lost their money can go after an actual person or at least get the site pulled offline?

  • Sam

    @41 Dia

    google: Dia and scam – 678,000 results lol

  • Joooosh

    LOL!! zaptunes must be offline now, i tried to go there just to check it out and can’t get connected. LOL!! Wonder what happened?? :D

  • Londra, GB

    Va dau @ muie.

    Cu respect,
    Tiganu’ Patel

  • Patel $cam

    The site is still up and look at the BS, even Yahoo is plugging this nonsense with their “news”:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20100826/bs_prweb/prweb4431134_3

  • lol

    no wonder it attracts attention, people who are weary of downloading through bit-torrent will almost certainly be interested in unlimited DRM-free downloads for a fee.

    Its about time the music industry stepped up and put this new business model to use.

    Afterall they’re losing soooo much money (they claim) using this new business model is nothing but win.

  • Whatever

    Like #1 eZee, i also never heard of it. Only internet news outlets ?

    I wonder if the MAFIAA will sue for fraud or copyright. It is ofcourse “potential lost profits” as at least $25 does not go to the MAFIAA.

    @TF(1) Nice article but please stop using the “number of reasons to” headline format. It starts to look like webwereld.nl with their “5 some text” headlines every day which really got annoying (Maybe they stopped by now?).

    @TF(2)Some good news: There seems to be a huge improvement in adding comments,the page loads much more often on its own after clicking “respond”. In other words, it doesn’t “hang” that often anymore. You must have fixed something.

  • pissed

    Had to cancel my F”’in credit card as my wife had registered it. World is full of assholes!!!!

  • Anonymous

    LOL. Have a looksy at all the spelling mistakes… under “Why Zaptunes” on front page: “Fully Portable format – MP3 Downoads”

    Haha. (fake)

  • Fubby

    LOL. Have a looksy at all the spelling mistakes… under “Why Zaptunes” on front page: “Fully Portable format – MP3 Downoads”

    Haha. (fake)

  • DeltaPan

    Just looked and on the join page, one of the first things they ask for is credit card details be input.

    Into a non secured page.

    Nobody should Ever input credit card number, account number or Visa string, whatever, if the page is not HTTPS.

    Always consider this.

    Legally, a dodgy site can sell credit card details and people may find criminals using their accounts anywhere in the world and even if somebody can say they only entered details into one site, like zaptunes, you will have entered them into an unsecured page and you could be held responsible for not being security conscious with your credit card details so have no recourse, it will be seen as your fault.

    This is similar to online pharmacies, seen scammed all over the place, such scam sites are well known to be a source of harvested credit card details, where those suffering fraud on their cards because of entering full details of account into a site where they are trying to procure drugs, may prefer to suffer the loss than have knowledge of using a pharmacy site to buy drugs made known to spouse, family, whatever.

    I navigate Anywhere where i am asked for payment on a non secured, non https page for, in my case, debit card details, i don’t proceed and that site never sees my IP again, end of.

    Vendors have a responsibility to provide a secure payment page, a secure page for credit/debit card verifications etc but not a legal requirement, as much as the user/customer has responsibility to check and not proceed if a page isn’t secure, unfortunately the banks see it as the same as if not being careful with a PIN and banks will refuse any understanding if you are found to have entered details on unsecured pages and you are defrauded and somebody manages to abuse your card etc.

    You can make an issue out of it but it takes a lot of time and effort to get banks to do what is right if the refuse because they find you’ve been unsecure with credit/debit card details online.

    Zaptunes is unsecured!

    Another reason to avoid them, and any site who asks for credit card details on a non https page.

    Not every unsecured page asking for card details is part of premeditated operandi to gain details where if approached by police or banking investigators the site can say they cannot be held responsible, but if any site can’t be bothered to provide a secured page for banking details input, they do not deserve your custom because they have a responsibility to you even if they are an honest vendor.

    Remember that, it will potentially save you grief from being defrauded on your card details, only input on secure, https pages.

    Peace. : ).

  • Darth_yoda

    @DeltaPan just because a page is encrypted doesn’t necessarily mean that a website is legitimate. Sure it can be a fairly big clue but overall anyone thesedays can pay for encryption. The only sure fire way of knowing whether a site is legitimate or not is whether the site has gone through the Verisign extended validation. In the likes of firefox and Internet Explorer this is seen as a green indicator to the left of the URL in the browser. Also the actual bit length of the encryption is important. Any encryption lower than 128-bit is insecure, anything higher should be seen as a good thing since it costs more and is far more secure.

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  • lol

    Just because a page is https doesnt mean its legit.

    Many things factor.. like certificates, if they pay alot of money for like a Verasign cert, there probably for real.

    In any case, its always good to call a company before handing over info. That way you can see if A. They Exist. B. They arent complete tards.

  • Streamreader

    I’m starting to feel that torrent sites are less trouble than sites where I have to pay for seemingly legal stuff. Just grabbing some torrents off TPB won’t drain your credit card.

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  • stillkicking

    And here is the 14th reason to avoid this scam: the name of the spokesperson. Patel is equivalent to Jones or Smith in English but, unlike the Jones and Smiths I have met in my life, Patel is pretty much a guarantee of some kind of rip off from people whose sole interest in hit and run with consumers. Think I am being discriminatory? Then you have obviously never had dealings with any Patels, Singhs, etc.

  • Jeff K.

    @59

    No, you’re being straight up racist. No worries there.

    @44

    Cancelled is not a misspelling. It’s the British spelling. I actually use this convention, as it looks more correct to me. Travelled, cancelled, etc. (I also spell the word “grey” even though I’m a born and bred Texan, who knows why.)

  • GooGooDoll

    @ 60

    “(I also spell the word ‘grey’ even though I’m a born and bred Texan, who knows why.)”

    Hmm, maybe that’s because you’re an indoctrinated inbred hippie redneck obsessed with “racism.” 59 made a valid point – but no, let’s pretend we’re all the same. Idiot.

  • Anonymous

    Reason #15: They’re hosted on Slicehost, a division of Rackspace, a well know spam and scam friendly site. We’ve had Rackspace blocked at our routers for nearly a decade with adding Slicehost to that block as soon as they were purchased.

  • Me

    Cunts

  • Jeff K.

    @ 61

    Ignoring the laughably internally confused and inaccurate namecall there: What?

    He made a valid point? No, no he didn’t. He said that Patel is equivalent to the Anglicized surnames Smith and Jones. (I guess if that’s the valid point, then okay, but that’s not much of one.) Then he said that the difference between the two is that Indians are thieving, conniving scam artists.

    More amazing to me than there being an idiot thinking he’s edgy by denigrating a billion people is that there was someone fucktarded enough to try and defend it. Though judging by your name and what it says about your taste in music, you might actually be mentally handicapped, so I should probably take that back.

  • Jeff K.

    @ 62

    You block every site hosted by Rackspace? That’s pretty fucking silly, considering what’s hosted there. And as a former business client of theirs, I can say I’ve had very few vendor relationships as good as that one.

    Extremely partial list of just what’s hosted on the RS cloud (not including managed server hosting, their bread and butter):

    Adobe
    Priceline
    Wendy’s
    Sears
    Laughing Squid (a great host themselves)
    Metacafe
    GamesRadar
    Websense
    Go

    100,000 hosting customers, 80,000 of those using cloud. You’re blocking all of those because of some misguided notion about their being friendly to spammers and scam sites? Man, am I fucking glad you’re not my network admin.

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  • Zero

    This is by all means a great peice of journalism.

    Especially loved the drain cover ending for this story.

  • XSS TIME!

    Who wants some good ol’ fashion XSS?

    https://www.zaptunes.com/free-download/mp3/alert(“We live in a giant sewer.”);/_/1901

    Time to go sploit’ a scam some more.

  • Jam
  • Pharaoh

    Surprised no-one’s mentioned this but the Beatles catalogue is owned by EMI.

  • lol

    besides Romanian and Turkish, Londra is London also in Italian

  • Anonymous

    Londra is is london in albanian as well….

    maybe the albanians have it :O

  • tips credit card

    nice article …
    I get new knowledge after read your post

  • Monster

    Maybe they are just using the record industries own tactics…

    Ooh lets put this song that we don’t own the right to on this compilation album & not tell anyone, or do anything about it unless someone takes us to court.

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