Spiral Frog is a bunch of bullfrog

Note: This post is over a year and a half old. You may want to check later in this blog to see if there is new information.

Spiral Frog is the service through which Universal will offer their entire music collection for free download. (Here’s the link to the Press Release). With a catch. It’s not only advertising based, it’s advertising forced.

Spiral Frog will offer a desktop downloader for Windows Media Files (no iPods!) that can be listened to on one PC and two portable devices. Here’s the kicker - you must log in to the Spiral Frog service at least once per month, and see their ads, or your files will stop playing! The details aren’t fully set in stone, but it will be something like that. There will be links to third party sites of the record labels’ choosing if you’d like to buy your freedom to at least skip the ads.
From Techcrunch.

When the mp3 format first came out, I was quick to announce massive changes to the music industry. When mp3.com began allowing artists direct access their audience, I cried out for the death of record labels. And now we’re all ready for it to happen, and what’s our first step? A hoax, in my opinion. DRM is so inhibitive that it’s a step backwards for music freedom. Not to say that iTunes is much better, having their own form of DRM. The web 2.0 philosophy as laid out in recent weeks should apply to the music industry as well. The technology provides a medium for mass distribution of music, in keeping with the Long Tail concept, from an unlimited number of vendors. The trick is creating a service that brings vendor and customer together (aggregator). The old guard in the record industry will be slow to catch on to this concept and, I believe, will die a slow death because of it. Spiral Frog, in the meantime, is a joke and is not going to bring us any closer to a music utopia worthy of any 2.0 monikers (for whatever they may be worth ;-)).

Addendum: Interesting development and accompanying DRM discussion over at TUAW. Quote from the discussion:

All DRM does is keep honest people honest while limiting what they can do with music they PAID for. You can find higher quality encoded audio on torrents/usenet/etc. DRM will never stop piracy because piracy is a social issue not a technical one. Also all DRM will be cracked eventually because at one point or another in the process of playback, the source data is open and viewable.

iTMS won’t get a penny from me until the DRM is gone. I will not be treated like a criminal when the real pirates enjoy un-protected music in higher quality.

Well said.

» » » »

Comments are closed

Comments are currently closed on this entry.
  1. Circle Six Blog » Blog Archive » EMI joins Universal in Spiral Frog hijinks 09.06.06 / 6am

    […] Spiral Frog is a bunch of bullfrogMyspace and DRM-Free MusicThe music war is on. DRM shields up. « The revolution is a bubble. EMI joins Universal in Spiral Frog hijinks […]

  2. none of ur buisness 12.08.06 / 1pm

    its a good i dea but why can they not just let you put it onto itune its like 80% of music downlaods go there and if you can then the 20 oercent will certainly be cut down by the advertising once a month thin if the didnt do that then it whould work unlees you could pay like £30 to avoid it but still that demolishes the whole pricipal of the word free that they use.

  3. Al Rodrick 12.19.06 / 1pm

    I’ve never really understood what the problem is with downloading music files from a peer to peer network. The argument is that the artist does not get a royalty because the tune is copyright protected. OK i’ll go along with that but why is that an author works are not protected that same way. I get all my best selling novels from a library for free. I watch new movies at a friends house for free along with other people-we share the rental cost.

    I can record(copy) any song from an FM staion(microphone it front of speaker), store it on my PC and then burn it on to a CD.

    Of course the music artist never sees a dime of royalties collect by fines paid for bootlegging music over a peer to peer network. Only the lawyers collect.

    There is another rip off going on that most people do not really know about. If music is played on the radio in any puplic place like a store or bar etc. the store owner must pay a monthly fee or be brought into court. Lets say you own a little store and play music from a local FM station where your customers can hear it you will be fined if you don’t pay a monthly fee to somebody??