EMI Music Publishing is announcing tonight that they are partnering with New York startup SpiralFrog to distribute music for free download. SpiralFrog hit the news late last month with their groundbreaking partnership with Universal to distribute music for free (see our coverage for more details). Universal appears set to buy BMG (the non Sony half of Sony-BMG) for roughly $2 billion in the next few days, so offerings through SpiralFrog could really explode. Major label music could be available to download for free, with ad support, as a general phenomenon before we know it.
The (big) downside here is that the music at SpiralFrog will be wrapped in strange DRM that requires regular logging in the the ad driven SpiralFrog service in order for the music files to continue playing. Standard DRM of limited devices, copies and Windows only applies as well. Some people say it’s still a big step because it’s free music, I (and others) question the technical coercion and wish there was some better way to do it.
EMI calls itself the largest music catalogue in the world and currently carries stars like Sting, Nelly Furtado, Jay Z and Kanye West. Sounds great for a party, just don’t forget to watch the obligatory ads before you expect to hit the dance floor.
The press release emphasizes the superior quality of SpiralFrog downloads, compared to the incomplete albums, low quality files and malware of the dark underworld of music piracy. I can’t help but think that many users would visit SpiralFrog regularly and view the advertisements just to get new free music, without being forced to do so in order for their downloaded files to work. That’s just creepy. Creepy or not, though, things are changing.
Music online for free… what a unique idea !
If you are going to be cynical about it, I must ask: have you listened yet to http://dontdown...oadthissong.com ? Not to be missed!
LMAO at that song
“don’t download this song
go to the record store where you belong
or you’ll burn in hell before too long”
reminds me of college. i hated how the RIAA shut down our campus file-sharing network.
as for spiral frog, free is a great way to get college kids using your stuff. It’s interesting to see that EMI is working with a start-up (and I’ve heard of other big company + startup partnerships too these days – Fox with Jumpcut). Good for all us small company folks.
It’s not free if you have to goto their site and view ads, etc.. it may not cost anything but its NOT free.
FYI, Bertelsmann is selling BMG Music Publishing group, not its 50% stake in Sony-BMG (music labels & distribution) which would fetch far more than $2 billion.
Its a great inititive and i support the model spiral has however, Even though its free UMI and EMI wil still chage ridiculous advances to spiral frog. This is no way to build up an industry, it is a short sited view from the record industry, they are making there targets by asking brands to pre-pay for sales, rather then working with brands to be creative in the market.
the thing with spiralfrog is that the music industry was trying to get apple to increase the price of songs from $0.99 as they weren’t making enough money. so i’m not sure how adverts will work. on google adsense for my own small business my ads cost me about $130 per month and from that i’ll get about 1,000 clicks and maybe $400 in sales (if i’m very lucky). so the maths don’t add up for a music label. how many adverts will they expect us to look at and click through to make enough money to cover the $1 cost of the song.
or will the song contain a recorded advert at the beginning or end, maybe instead of album art there will be an advert slideshow!
I just hope the FairUse4DRM hack still works when Spiral Frog is launched
.
http://forum.do...ad.php?t=114916
Spiralfrog is attempting to be the new Internet radio not an online retailer of content and Im sure they will partner with several online retailers so you can free the tracks from thier subscrption shackles and they will recive an affiliate commision for the sale .
The Music Downloads expire in 6 months .And you cant burn the music .
I’m still not quite sure I understand how this works. Does it come with a peice of software or custom player that you can only use to listen to these files? Can they be burned to disc?
It doesn’t seem much better then a customized radio station. Seems like something that will be popular for about one month and then die away.
Found this interesting blog though about it. Not sure if its the company or just some random person’s blog, but it has decent info about SpiralFrog.
http://www.spiralfrogblog.com
Hi,don’t waste your money any more to buy cd,you can download huge amounts music from
http://www.freemusicforum.com
ALL FREE,HURRY UP!!!
Actually this is not a new idea, about 5 years ago there was a website called http://www.amp3.com that offered ad-supported mp3 files. The downloads were free and you listened to an ad at the beginning of each song. The artists made 10 cents per download. My band made about $90 a month through that the old amp3.com ad supported service. The website eventually shutdown because of an internal dispute on who patented the technology behind the ad-driven music model. I hope that Spiral Frog is able to revive this business model. I hope that this ad-supported business model is open to all music on the net – unsigned and signed. If it is only for the signed acts then it will be shame. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they open it up to all artists.
-Dan Cote
drummer, The Reverse Engineers
http://www.ther...seengineers.com
I do not believe this