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Spiral Fog
I was pretty jazzed to see that Universal Music is licensing its entire catalog to a free music service called Spiral Frog. But then I went and looked at the details. The free music will come with DRM on it.
That's crap.
I actually don't want free music, I want to pay for music without copy protection on it.
Why don't they license their entire catalog to eMusic? That would be a smart idea.
This one is dumb.
August 29, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology | Permalink
Comments
I had exactly the same though: (http://www.cyberdany.com/blog/archives/2006/08/ranocchi.html)
I think they realized they had done a huge mistake giving Apple the chance to have a strong grip on digital music market several years ago.
Now they are desperatly trying to get it back with a worse mistake. SpiralFrog is not competitive comparing to iTunes (it is not compatible with the iPod and DRM rules are stricter that the Apple DRM) nor comparing to eMule.
OffTopic: what Apple is waiting to buy Last.fm and integrate it with iTunes?
Posted by: Daniele Della Seta | Aug 29, 2006 4:43:32 PM
Assuming that the DRM isn't too strict, I think most people will be very happy to have restricted copies of their favorite albums for free. I know that I will be checking it out later on this evening. That said, I am by no means a prosumer of electronic music.
Posted by: Andrew Fife | Aug 29, 2006 6:32:10 PM
as is the name and logo and everything about barffrogmusic.com
they seem to just help apple muddle through
Posted by: howard Lindzon | Aug 29, 2006 8:41:39 PM
of course, eventually, someone will release a crack for the DRM... just like FairUse4WM...
Posted by: JL | Aug 29, 2006 10:48:41 PM
Brrr... Achingly bad brand and name too - it's down with the kids, see... ugh.
Posted by: paulpod | Aug 30, 2006 2:38:29 AM
It's a very interesting move and you almost have to wonder if this isn't the first nail in the "pay for media" coffin. If you look at most all of the fast-growing media sites on the Net right now (e.g., YouTube, Odeo, etc.) they are based around free content. The sites that sell media (e.g., Audible, Napster, etc.) are seeing traffic largely flat or declining. With all of the indie music and podcasts out there right now one really has to wonder what the future is for premium media...
Posted by: Jon Bischke | Aug 30, 2006 4:22:07 AM
The need for a distinction between different types of freedom was identified and solved quite neatly by the open source software community in recent years.
They would say this music is "free as in beer, not as in speech", meaning you don't have to pay for it, but it's not freely usable.
Music which is free as in speech is what we want. The cost, as long as it is reasonable, is largely irrelevant.
Posted by: Matt Ryall | Aug 30, 2006 9:16:38 AM
I've been waiting for this to happen - every spiral frog will only make iTunes look better and hopefully focus the DRM debate where it should have been; i.e. on the shortsightedness of the labels and the established artists, not on apple.
Apple have been unfairly vilified for iTunes DRM when that focus should have been on the studios (sony) and the over-the-hill-rockers (dave matthews) who have made it impossible to truly "free" music and open the media marketplaces.
Posted by: David G | Aug 30, 2006 11:33:05 AM
seriously, this will never work. people aren't going to subject themselves repeatedly to commercials just to listen to a song, when they can get it somewhere else for nothing.
when is someone/some entity going to get it right? A small fee per month for unlimited, unrestricted downloads. It seems so simple and somewhere, somehow, someone is going to make the business model work. And when they do, they will extremely rich.
Apple/ITunes DRM is a joke. A total joke. People use IPod's because they're simple, not because the ITunes Music Store is their vice. The device is the vice! I have 6,000 songs in my library and NONE of them are from the ITunes music store. I either bought the CD or got it on EMusic. I might have two albums worth of music I've downloaded from P2P apps for free.
My point: i suspect most people's Ipod music is not from the Apple Music Store.
Seperate but related: I've heard that the terms EMusic is handing down to labels and artists are extremely poor and that's one of the reasons why some larger labels are hesitant. Then there's the unrestricted issue, of course.
So frustrating.
Posted by: Jeff | Aug 30, 2006 2:41:06 PM
