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August 29, 2006
SpiralFrog - Free Download Service
This just in (NYT):
A new online music company said today that it would make a huge catalog of songs from the world’s largest record company, the Universal Music Group, available for consumers to download free. The company, called SpiralFrog, said its intention was to wean music fans, especially young people, away from illegal downloads and pirate music sites by offering a legitimate source, supported by advertising instead of download fees.
Free legitimate music..wh..wh..what?!? There must be a catch...
SpiralFrog’s free downloads will come with many more strings attached than Apple’s paid ones do. Users of SpiralFrog will have to sit through advertisements, and will be prevented by special software from making copies of the songs they download or from sharing them with other people.
Why I think it will ultimately fail:
They will have to revisit the SpiralFrog web site regularly to keep access to the music they download. And the songs will be encoded in Microsoft’s WMA format, meaning they will probably not work on Apple iPod portable music players.
IPods dominate the hardware market for digital music market players, if this service caters to only non-iPod users, how earth shattering could it really be? No bold MS.com statement, just an honest question. I'll give them props for trying something new at least.
Universal is the only label for now, but other labels will be courted:
Neville Hobson, a spokesman for SpiralFrog, said the company hopes to pursue licensing deals with the other major record companies — Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music — to augment its deal with Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi.
When?
Expected to start testing its service in the United States and Canada by the end of the year, and would extend its service to Britain and other European markets next year.
//SpiralFrog - site
Tags: SpiralFrog, Universal, Digital Music
Posted by Merry Swankster at August 29, 2006 03:31 PM
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