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Free ad-supported music downloads debuts at SpiralFrog |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Tuesday, 18 September 2007 |
 Digital music service SpiralFrog just launched recently after
several delays due to music licensing issues. This site boasts over 800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos available at launch.
SpiralFrog is able to provide free music by requiring the user to view ads in order to
download the music. They also have a revenue-sharing deal with the labels that have
signed on thus far.
However, since the music files from the site have digital rights management software, it can only be opened with Windows media player (WMP). This means that if you do not use WMP, you cannot play the files. This leaves out most of the Mac users and iPod users.
The
tracks cannot be burned to a CD or transferred to the iPod. The files
can, only be transferred to (no more than two) other, WMP-compatible digital
music players.
The site also requires the user to log in and view ads at least once every
30 days. However, if you do not, all music downloaded from that
account will become disabled.
At this time, two major labels, Universal Music Group (UMG) and EMI are on board with this site in addition to other independent labels.
In my humble opinion, this will probably not work out. If someone wanted free music, they probably would not go to this site, sign up an account and watch ads to download a song with so many restrictions. It is not that hard to find an MP3 song without restrictions just using Google itself. You don't even need to download extra software or risk getting your song deleted if you do not sign in to watch an ad for 30 days.
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