News

Universal to Offer Songs Via Free Music Service

Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 10:15 AM - by

Universal Music plans to offer music through a new online service that generates revenue through advertising instead of per song sales. Financial Times reports that the service is called SpiralFrog, and it will launch in December.

Unlike the iTunes Music Store, which charges US$0.99 per song download, and other services that charge monthly subscription fees, SpiralFrog plans to recoup its costs through advertisement sales. The fact that Universal is backing the company shows that music labels are willing to try almost anything to sway consumers away from illegal file sharing systems.

Fashion company Perry Ellis is planning on advertising on SpiralFrog, and Levi's, Aeropostale, and Benetton have all expressed interest.

Additional information about how the service will operate, and which devices it will be compatible with, is not available.

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Biff said:

member since 08 Apr 2004 with 1479 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Aug 29, 2006 11:25 am

Hey that's similar to an idea I had. I am going to start a company that gives people a free PC, they just have to run software that shows ads on the screen. I think that the ad revenue business model is the new paradigm. It's going to change everything. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go plan for my new company's IPO.

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Dirt Road said:

member since 24 Oct 2002 with 1228 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Aug 29, 2006 1:00 pm

A couple guesses as to how this will work: you will have to sign up, of course (no biggie there, the old MP3.com and today's epitonic.com do it as well). You will have to provide lots & lots of personal data (which one can lie about), including physical & email addresses and probably a phone number. The final sign-up page will contain lots of boring text that most people will click past, but the important part (buried deep) will allow Universal to furnish your data "to our marketing partners." And you'll have to agree to this to be allowed access, so count on being junk mailed, telemarketed, and spammed to death.

So in between fending off telemarketing calls, you'll probably have to sit through a Flash ad each time you want to download something (see salon.com for an example, if you haven't subscribed). This provides some more revenue (although they'll make the big bucks selling your data) while adding a measure of rate-limiting.

Finally... wanna bet the music is protected WMA format? Just because it's free doesn't mean it won't be copy-protected.

When the service folds up and blows away, they'll still be selling you to their "partners" and will bury an opt-out-by-mail clause somewhere on the Universal site, after the FTC gets a ton of complaints.

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gslusher said:

member since 13 Nov 2002 with 2050 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Aug 29, 2006 5:03 pm

I like Dirt Road's scenario. One of the cardinal rules of the Universe is that there is no free lunch. (That's one way of expressing the First Law of Thermodynamics or the Conservation of Energy, as well: energy out = energy in + decrease in stored energy.)

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