Free legal music downloads in time for Christmas

[Steve]

The Register reports on a new music service that might actually be worth a look.

It had to happen. A new legal music download service will be launched in December which will offer MP3s free at the point of delivery. New York-based Spiralfrog says its site will be fully funded by advertising.

The firm has some heavyweight backing in the shape of Vivendi Universal Music Group. Research apparently revealed consumers were willing to suffer ads for products relevant to them in exchange for free tunes.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6603

[awm]

Can I put it on my iPod (or listen to it not tethered to a Windows PC with Windows Media player 11 and an internet connection)? If not I'm not really interested. Its good that the music industry is starting to catch onto reality though, hopefully they will discover that cheep musics without ads sells well too! At 1/2 the price I would proably buy 3-4X more music, meaning more money for them!

[Steve]

They seem to be MP3s, which means no DRM.

It's an interesting model that just might work, if the RIAA don't attempt to crush it.

[awm]

If they are indead MP3 without being locked in any sort of DRM safe I'm very interested. I mean how annoying can a few ads be (maybe I shouldn't say that before anything gets jynxed).

[moby_matt]

I like the pricipal, but if there is no form of DRM then folk might just share them via P2P. This could cause problems with advertising hits, thus defeating the object of the venture.

We will see...

Matt.

P.S. I am interested, however. :-)

[Steve]

If people couldn't already get any music file they wanted via P2P, your point would be valid, moby_matt.

As it stands, I think it's worth the risk. I just hope people react favourably to non-DRM'd content in sufficient strength to show that it's what we want.

[moby_matt]

That's what I hope they will do, Steve... What I mean't was that the venture is being funded by advertising, but if the files get shared then those who have paid for advertising space will not see enough return to justify participation, potentially causing a collapse of the service.

I really do want to see it work as it can only be a good thing (though we have yet to see the ads and what they will entail).

I also wonder how much material they can make available. As it stands, I see a fair few major players not liking this idea - thoughts, anyone?

Matt.

[directhex]

i'll wait & see whether it's *really* mp3 they're offering, or whether it's the industry using "mmp3" when they mean something else, as per usual

[chuckskull]

I'm highly doubtful it'll be 'proper' MP3's at a decent bitrate, but then again this site is guarenteed to get a LOT of traffic. Which means they might get enough advetising to make this work.

Another guess here, they'll probably give you one download page per-song, to maximise the number of ads thrown at you. It'll be pretty easy to get 90cents(price for one DL from the top of my head), worth of ads on a page, not sure if they'll manage enough revenue per page, to make entire albums at once feasable.

[directhex]

I'm highly doubtful it'll be 'proper' MP3's at a decent bitrate, but then again this site is guarenteed to get a LOT of traffic. Which means they might get enough advetising to make this work.

Another guess here, they'll probably give you one download page per-song, to maximise the number of ads thrown at you. It'll be pretty easy to get 90cents(price for one DL from the top of my head), worth of ads on a page, not sure if they'll manage enough revenue per page, to make entire albums at once feasable.

ads i'll put up with. DRM i won't.

[chuckskull]

ads i'll put up with. DRM i won't.

adblock

[Steve]

adblock

But then you're just stealing again...

[chuckskull]

But then you're just stealing again...

Not unless I consumately agree to look at the ads. A site giving away free music thats funded by ads is different to a site that makes you look at ads in return for music.

[dancingmatt]

It might require click-through - you get a page of ads, you have to follow something.

Or like those terrible iPodforfree things, where you would be able to download lots of music so long as you sign up for various "trials" - ten downloads for each trial, for example.

There's lots of models they could use.

And I won't be at all surprised if it's limited to just the US when it launches. So not holding my breath. But glad to see someone making a different approach.

DM

[Mike Fishcake]

Advertisements or Adware though?

[awm]

From http://www.baltimoresun.com/business...ness-headlines

SpiralFrog's users will be required to watch a 90-second advertisement while each song downloads. The New York-based company believes that advertising revenue will offset the cost of licensing Universal's music once the site launches this year.

Downloaded tunes can be saved to a hard drive or transferred to a portable music player, but users will have to visit the SpiralFrog Web site once a month and watch more ads. Otherwise, digital locks on the music will make it inaccessible.

Edit:

unfourtuneatly the songs will not work on ipod

Notably, the songs downloaded won't be formatted to play on iPods. That could be a boon to Apple rival Microsoft Corp., which is preparing to launch its own music player, called Zune, this year. Already, Microsoft provides the technology that supports subscription music sites such as Yahoo Music and the recently relaunched Napster Inc.