Universal to try ad driven music downloads through SpiralFrog - still with DRM

August 29th, 2006 at 9:01 am

I think they’re doing this because their targeted demographic doesn’t listen to the radio anymore. Do you know if it’s Windows only? Or Mac/Linux DRM too?

August 29th, 2006 at 9:20 am

Who cares if they are restricted by DRM, the songs are free to download anyway…so instead of someone sending their friends a song they will send a link to the free download of the song.

August 29th, 2006 at 9:48 am

If one copy of a song is available on a P2P network, it is as good as millions of perfect digital copies. So what is the point of DRM? To prevent more copies of the file being available on P2P networks? This isn’t an economy of scarcity; the number of copies available is irrelevant.

What is the purpose of DRM in an ad supported model? A lot of people are going to watch ads in order to download music. Advertises will still pay to reach all the traffic these downloads will generate. Those opposed to DRM will still download from P2P networks. Does it really matter if the file on the P2P network was ripped from a CD or from this new site? Seems like it would be better to get these people to watch an ad than drive them to download illegally.

This is a step in the right direction for the music industry and may be viewed in the future as a landmark move. Unfortunately it also highlights the music industries inability to fully adapt to the digital landscape.

August 29th, 2006 at 9:56 am

It’s hard not to believe that many (most?) of these advertising-supported business models are going to come crashing down to earth. I don’t see many kids or adults being patient enough to sit through hundreds of ads to download hundreds of songs. The word ANNOYING comes to mind.

August 29th, 2006 at 10:22 am

This could be either completely awesome or absolutely horrible. The idea is great - free, legal, downloadable music from the major labels (well, a major label, at the moment).

It all comes down to the execution. How intrusive are the ads and the DRM? Because that’s what’s going to keep people from just pirating the stuff.

Please don’t screw this up, Universal. And when you do, don’t blame piracy, blame a hosed business model attached to a good idea.

August 29th, 2006 at 12:04 pm

I’m curious to get everyone’s opinion on digital watermarking as a method of tracking song purchase history as a way of circumventing the need for DRM. A niche digital music store, http://www.traxsource.com, sells mp3’s that are specially encoded with the purchaser’s information, thereby enabling the store to track down the original file owner should the file end up illegally distributed on a P2P. What has surprised me for the 1+ years that the service has been around, is how no other service seems to offer this DRM-free approach; does anyone know why?

Another nice feature of the site is the variable pricing structure based on bit rate (e.g. $0.99/192kbps vs. $1.99/320kbps); again, something no other service offers, to my knowledge.

August 29th, 2006 at 1:45 pm

WHO NEEDS THIS CRAP? JUST USE EASYNEWS!

August 29th, 2006 at 2:30 pm

Yeah, I don’t know about these advertising supported business models. But, companies can DRM all they want, it’ll be cracked.

August 29th, 2006 at 3:11 pm

We’ve done research in the emerging broadband interactive advertising space, the thing that comes back time and again to make advertising attractive, is relevance. This requires a partnership between listener and advertiser, a pull rather than push model - or at least a permission based push model.

Will this work…..well, “legal” free music is fairly attractive to the mass market, and if enough of a partnership is there to make the ads relevant then maybe. I wonder though, whether any advertiser would really want their product associated with people being subjected to their ad, as a means to getting music re-enabled ? I would suspect that smaller sessions of ads, placed more frequently, will be more tolerable over the long run.

August 30th, 2006 at 12:59 am

Someone’s already put up an obit for iTunes at http://asadodo.blogspot.com/20.....-2006.html - well I found it funny, anyway.

September 1st, 2006 at 8:57 am

What’s the point in dowloading songs that you can’t listen to on your ipod and being made to watch adverts.

October 3rd, 2006 at 4:47 am

the concept or thought rather is not too bad add support downloads, honestly the DRM is a big pain in the ass, to be frank its qutie nisulting actually, what the hell, it just stops working whilst your up and away and then what.
Also, reffering to a previous post, charging 1.99 for a 320kbps file is just plain waste too. Especially when you charge 1 dollar less for a lower bitrate file, a bit silly really.

In terms of a business model, I think http://www.magantune.com have got it somewhat right, a host of supported formats from WAV to Mp3 (yes, people WAV) without any form of DRM, the funny part is, they “allow” for sharing the files (even they don’t ahve DRM), which is totally unnesessary but a nice touch anyways. Magnatune provides artists with 50% of all cashflow. Not bad. Only downside to it is, they do not have a great number of artists signed up.

Coming back to spiral frog, add support , fine, DRM that requires users to forcefully watch the adds…not so fine. Risky endeavour.

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January 4th, 2007 at 8:18 am

Try Zaziggy.com. It’s independent artists, but the ads are not movies, they’re banners paying the artists. The file formats are MP3 and they’re not regulated. The artists are screened to make sure there’s some level of quality on the site. The artist lineup is small for now but growing steadily.