“A new online music company said today that it would make a huge catalog of songs from the world’s largest record company, the Universal Music Group, available for consumers to download free,” Eric Pfanner reports for The International Herald Tribune.
“SpiralFrog is the latest to offer a challenge to Apple Computer’s hugely successful iTunes service, which allows consumers to download songs legally for 99 cents apiece, and its many smaller imitators,” Pfanner reports.
Pfanner reports, “For consumers, SpiralFrog’s free downloads will come with many more strings attached than Apple’s paid ones do. Users of SpiralFrog will have to sit through advertisements, and will be prevented by special software from making copies of the songs they download or from sharing them with other people.”
“They will have to revisit the SpiralFrog web site regularly to keep access to the music they download. And the songs will be encoded in Microsoft’s WMA format, meaning they will probably not work on Apple iPod portable music players,” Pfanner reports.
“Given the fragmentation of the digital music business — the hundreds of would-be challengers to iTunes mainly have minuscule shares of the market — analysts said that new services like SpiralFrog would face difficult challenges, despite the lure of ‘free’ music,” Pfanner reports.
“The music industry must also manage its relationship with Apple carefully, analysts said,” Pfanner reports. “SpiralFrog took pains to discourage talk that its free-with-advertising model would threaten Apple’s pay-per-song service. ‘This is certainly not being pitched as a challenger to iTunes,’ Neville Hobson, a spokesman for SpiralFrog, said. ‘It’s a very different model. It’s complementary to iTunes.’”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Here come the Apple iTunes Music Store wannabes… again – August 29, 2006
Universal Music and SpiralFrog to launch free ad-supported music service – August 29, 2006
Complementary to itunes how?
Um……..no thanks.
Complementary as in, we’ll take whatever’s leftover from iTunes.
Free is good. If it wasn’t so easy to get drm-free songs for free, I would use this. iTunes is great, but $99 dollars for $100 songs is a lot. I have 3500 songs on my computer. I couldn’t have afforded to pay $3500 for them. Competition is good–I don’t know why all of the MDN readers support an iTunes only world. Don’t we hate the Windows-only world?
Bilbo,
Listen to the tunes for free on Spiralfrog, then pay to download what you like at iTunes. I’ve done similar using Pandora and iTunes/eMusic.
Oh, what tangled webs we weave, When we first practice to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott
Scottish author & novelist (1771 – 1832)
WINNER!
Free music, I like that: It’s free, unless of course you want to download it.
Super Tim:
There’s a BIG difference between an iTunes-only world and an Windows-only world.
iTunes [Music Store] continues to evolve into a better and better place for individuals to discover and enjoy a growing catalog of music. With a wide variety of content (music, videos, podcasts, TV shows, etc.), it has something for everybody.
Windows is an operating system that frustrates people day-in and day-out, and fails to respond to the needs of the individual. It is designed to employ lazy IT “administrators”.
iTunes brings enjoyment to the world.
Windows brings sadness and frustration to the world.
Free is worthless, SuperTim, if you can’t play the music.
coolfactor
Well stated!
Complementary in the sense that people can get free full length samples of music, unlike in iTunes. If they like it then they can purchase it through the iTMS. The two models can work together without necessarily having to compete.
So basically, they are starting a radio station.
SpiralDog sounds just like the radio, you get your music with some advertising.
Coolfactor,
Don’t get me wrong, I love iTunes and hate windows. And I think that iTunes is dominating the market because it is the best available option. But from the tone of many of the posts on this website, I get the idea that alot of you want iTunes to have no competition. I am just reminding you all that when a different music store opens, it has the potential to drive iTunes prices down and quality up.
Windows was a pretty good option for computing in the 90’s (I have never owned a windows machine though), and it took the world in one swoop. Now that it has virtually no competitors, there is little forcing windows to innovate and remain the best product available (I don’t think it ever was, but that’s another discussion).
All I am saying is that it is good, not bad, when a store like this opens up, because if they didn’t, then the quality of itunes would plummet. Apple is a business, and they are just as vulnerable to focusing on profit as any other company.
Use that model for TV. Not for music.
DBS…. nice.. but the next line is informative.
“Oh what tangled webs we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
And when we’ve practiced for awhile,
How we do improve our style!”
Super Tim wrote: “but $99 dollars for $100 songs is a lot”
Actually, that’s cheap, man! You saved a buck.
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Free music?
Been there, done that, got a 60 GB iPod full to prove it.
“…meaning they will probably not work on Apple iPod portable music players”
Probably? Last time I checked the words probably and definitely meant different things.
There is no way to directly challenge iTunes Music Store. iTMS will be #1 as long as the iPod rules. So these “iTunes challenger” articles are meaningless. To effectively challenge Apple in music, the competition must provide the complete package like Apple does (iPod, iTunes, iTMS). Any competitor that tries just one piece of the package will fall short just like Creative, iRiver’s company, and Sandisk (three music players companies), AND Napster, Real, and Urge (three music service companies). Why? Relying on Microsoft to provide “iTunes” piece is one key reason. The only competitor who follows Apple’s approach is Sony, and it has also failed to have impact. Microsoft will give it a shot with Zune, at the expense of its “partners.”
Hey Super Tim,
Do the math !
Approximately 100 cds would cost about $2000
Approximately 100 cds would give you about 2000 songs
Out of that, about 500 songs or less, would be worthwhile
Thus, you’d pay about $4 per song, buying a whole cd,
just to get the songs you like.
This is why record companies love cds, a few good songs,
alot of filler.
I only buy compilations and ITMS for the reason that, its very effective.
More ‘free’ ‘junk’ music isn’t the solution, especially with annoying ads, or if you don’t actually get to own the songs.
About competition, there is no ‘real’ competition to iTunes. Every startup to go against ITMS has had no real strategy, while Apple has extremely high quality standards, a CROSS-PLATFORM solidly planned strategy, and most of all, PROGRESSIVE ideas, the others can’t even keep up with old versions of ipod/itms. So how are ‘crippled wannabees’ competitors?
actually, the only complement to itunes i can see is
e-music, i haven’t tried them yet, but 65 drm-free songs for $14 sounds like a fantastic deal. Unfortunately, they have alot of underground house, electronic, and downtempo music, but that’s exactly what i’m looking for.
MDN magic word “price”
at e-music, the price is definitely right!
Free is a good thing. But this looks like it will be a pain in the ass. Sorry I’d rather pay for iTunes.
So will easyWMA be able to convert these files do you think?