“SpiralFrog.com, a service scheduled to open today, will let Web surfers download songs by U2, Timbaland, Amy Winehouse and other Universal Music Group artists free,” Joseph Menn reports for The Los Angeles Times. “The catch: Consumers have to wait 90 seconds for each track to download, and they must answer questions each month about their buying habits. In addition, the songs can’t be played on iPods or burned onto CDs as they can with 99-cent downloads from the dominant online music store, Apple Inc.’s iTunes.”
“The revenue from advertisers, which so far include Chevrolet and the U.S. Army, is to be split, with the labels and music publishers getting more than half of the total,” Menn reports. “The industry would prefer subscription services, but none of them has taken off despite efforts by major companies such as Yahoo Inc. and RealNetworks Inc. So the record labels are ranging further in pursuit of permanent downloads on terms that aren’t dictated by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Since nearly everything that Steve Jobs touches turns to gold, perhaps the music cartels would do well to take Jobs’ dictation. It would certainly be preferable to dreaming about unending subscriptions to which nobody in their right mind wants to shackle themselves or participating in “FailuresForSure” like this SpiralFrog debacle.
Menn continues, “Despite a deal with Universal, the world’s largest record label, the New York company’s survival is far from assured… It has burned through more than $10 million in funding and shed a number of its top managers trying to get off the ground.”
“Although the company stresses that it has sold Universal Music Group on the concept of revenue-sharing, the filing shows that SpiralFrog had to pay the record company $2 million as an advance against that revenue,” Menn reports. “Although Universal and the other labels declined to discuss SpiralFrog on the record, executives at two labels said they had serious doubts about the company’s prospects.”
“Among the drawbacks to SpiralFrog are the 90-second wait time that SpiralFrog founder and Chairman Joe Mohen said music-rights owners demanded; the absence thus far of music from the other three major record labels; required monthly visits to the site to keep the music playable; and mandatory survey questions on such topics as how often users attend concerts and whether they are more inclined to buy a band’s music if they agree with the group’s political statements,” Menn reports.
Menn reports, “Probably the biggest negatives are that the tracks can’t be burned onto blank CDs, and they can be transferred only to Windows-compatible mobile players and phones. That leaves out Apple’s market-leading iPod.”
Full article here.
Joe Mandese reports for MediaPost that Joe Mohen, chairman and founder of SpiralFrog, said the thing “is aimed at ‘people who have more time and less money.’ ‘And they’re used to getting it for free,'” said SpiralFrog’s new vice president of marketing and sales, George Hayes, former Universal McCann honcho.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “macdan2004” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Just what advertisers love, people with no money who want things for free. Who wrote SpiralFrog’s business plan, a group of preschoolers at snack time? No wonder they’re having trouble getting the thing off the ground; it doesn’t even fly on paper.
I wonder how these businesses even get off the ground.
@PCApologist:
You say that Apple should license the iPod with WMA/PlaysForSure. Are you serious?
All of Apple’s winning cards are in its own hand. Wasting money trying to support a poor system like WMA is pointless.
And why would anyone want to support a continuing Microsoft hegemony for Pete’s sake?
Thanks to Apple that we have some decent choice at all.
Get real…
Now anyone who thinks Michael Moore tells the truth is beyond ignorant; they are screaming out for the men in white coats to come find you. So, the Bowling for Columbine reference is simple humor.
Doesn’t it make sense for the army to target people who don’t have money and thus would want to take them up on their services? There’s no draft folks. People join the army because they want to. So of course the army is going to target folks who aren’t attached to a job. Duh.
Now you don’t see all the other ways that the army recruits people, because you’re not part of the defense contractor / intel world, but rest assured, they’ve got more than one demographic and more than one tactic.
Again, duh.
I don’t blame them for writing that BP, I’m wondering about who would invest ten plus million in this scheme?
I’ve never heard if M$ hit the 1 million zune’s sold by June that they had hoped for. Anyone? I’ve not seen one in the wild.
If only this kind of effort were put into breaking up Microsoft we might be doing something useful for our world – I just don’t get this kind of thing at all.
What in the world is the 90-second delay about? Why would music companies insist upon it?
There’s about a 15-second delay in buying a song using iTunes, and having it downloaded to the computer (more, I’d guess, with a slow connection). How does an extra minute and change make any sort of a difference?
Anyone?
@ Zune Tang
YAWN.
This idea is so stupid it’s scary. And asking kids to take survey’s about themselves to get free music seems sleazy too.
PS: I’ve only seen 1 zune. Middle aged woman crossing the street in front of my car. I thought she was carrying a book at first. It was the brown one.
2 iphones in the last two days. I had only seen 2 others in the wild since the launch, so the new pricing must be working.
Owners looking very giddy, with lots of gawkers around them.
Ya just gotta love Universal. After telling Apple to piss off they’re trying so hard o get some to take their music. This thing is just another joke:
Universal and yet another subscription service: iPods need not apply.
DOL – Dead on launch.
I wonder which village idiot came up with this idea?
Sounds like a typical marketing person’s approach, after-all the company seems more interested in the ‘customers’ buying habits more than the store itself.
Every other company on the planet buys market research customer data or employes a company to do research. Not these idiots, they have setup a music dowload store jsu to get information.
If people like Universal dont know their customers buying habits by now then im amazed they are still in business.
I give it 4 months max.
It’s called “cutting off your nose to spite your face”. And then shooting yourself in the face. Buh Bye, Universal.
@ NSFY
“The same could be said for rap music, modeling and pro basketball.”
But only one of those professions is likely to get you shot.
BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots:
Hey, you’re letting your prejudices show again. Since when did you become the arbiter of “truth”?
Me thinks the use of personal insults shows a lack of cogent argument, particularly as what you spout is often biased and factually inaccurate. You should wake up… just saying that Michael Moore’s film isn’t true does not make it so. And his facts from that film are verifiable and you can check them out yourself… but that’d require you looking at something other than Fox News.
And, “People join the army because they want to. is a laughable, naive statement to make that shows you have no knowledge of economic forces.
What a joke.
The music industry is well in pain as it goes down the toilet. They are desperate to find a gravy train. The music industry wants free money and the music buying customers’ want to pay the artist for their work without putting money into the pockets of an industry that they see as out dated and long over due for failure. The trend is not new it’s just that the focus has changed in the late 1990’s the music buying public left the mall music retailers high and dry by 2000 most mall music stores were closed, next they started leaving the big chain music retail stores and the business started drying up, that resulted in chain consolidation Tower Records, Warehouse Records (now f.y.e.), and Virgin Mega were all kicked to the curb by consumers leaving them niche players in the music retail business that they once dominated. Now Wal-mart is the number one music retailer in the US. This was not by chance this was by default if you are lucky enough to remember the days of going into a Tower Records and finding rows and rows of music, 10 of thousands of titles and you could spend hours discovering new artists and music and much of it was current releases (released in the last 9 to 12 months).
The music industry started to cut the number of new release each week, each month, each year. As the number of new release declined the retailers started to first replace empty space with Video rentals and then sale through. Then they started stocking larger and larger numbers of back catalog releases and some jumped into the used CD market. The lack of new releases is leading to the demise of the Music Retailers large and small. (RIP Tower, Camelot, Virgin Mega, Peaches, Warehouse, Hastings, and the many others I didn’t list here)
The Retailers that were the domain of the Rack Jobbers like Wal-mart and Best Buy were convinced by the labels to do away with the middleman and stock the new releases that they send them and the oldies that they need to clear out and they will make more money then having the jobber stock the music that is relevant to that market and just sell the same Music in all of it’s stores. Best Buy and Walmart went direct to the labels letting the labels send them what they wanted them to sell. The music industry feels this is the perfect model because they have total control over what gets sold, displayed and even what gets discounted. But, in the end Wal-Mart and Best Buy’s positions will slip to iTunes some from selling less but more from iTunes selling more. The main reason is choice. iTunes has more new and current releases then any other music retailer because iTunes also sells a lot and I do mean a lot of indie music.
From the labels view why do 400 to 1000+ releases annually when you can do 4 or 5 and then force them down the throats of the consumers so all the releases are basically hit records. In the labels defense they have managed to reduce the sales numbers required to have a hit, so much, that just about anyone can have a hit record these days.
Apple is the third largest music retailer in the US but does not sell a physical product, No warehouse space, no manufacturing, no shipping, no real cost for the music labels at all, has expanding and increasing sales (the only music retailer that does at this time), and the labels take most of the money pie from tracks sold. The Record labels don’t want iTunes to continue to grow. The question begs to be asked. Are they nuts? Is they business perspective so, out in left field, that they are willing to chew off there legs to look for a fatter gravy train.
The Music Industry keeps trying to promote and push down every ones throat the rental music model. which means as long as you pay it’s your’s, provided the renting agent does not fold up and leaves high and dry with useless DRM’ed files.
The Music Industry is not listening to the music buying public they don’t want DRM’d, low quality, rented tracks. What they do want is high quality, DRM free, tracks priced in line with CDs minus the cost of manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, stocking and other costs not incurred with data only goods. iTunes pricing is higher then this but, it’s in the margin of what customer’s will tollerate.
The music industry is killing itself and driving itself to the poorhouse at great heck speeds, they will not win a lottery, there is no magical gravy train, rental music is not the answer and neither is sue kids for the money they are loosing from their own failed business models.
SpiralFrog will just be another looser in the long list of loosers that the music industry will bleed dry and then toss aside, bloody and broke.
@ ChrissyOne
Tell that to Tupac, Biggie, Jam Master Jay, DeShawn Stevenson, etc.
LOL – “Just what advertisers love, people with no money who want things for free. Who wrote SpiralFrog’s business plan, a group of preschoolers at snack time? No wonder they’re having trouble getting the thing off the ground; it doesn’t even fly on paper.”
I was thinking:
free time, no money = loser
utilizing free time to try and earn money, no money = college kid
Apparently SpiralFrog thinks college kids would prefer wasting time on adverts rather than run to class and get an education so they can one day afford to BUY merchandise. In reality, business is business, somehow SpiralFrog will skim the money off the top of the budget, so, sink or swim, their executives won’t be on welfare anytime soon. That’s the new business model folks – pyramid scheme money skimming. That is why these also-rans start-up, free money if you can appear convincing enough for just long enough. Mark my words.
This is more proof of Internet Bubble 2.0.
PC Apologist – If you’re apologizinfg for cheap PC’s, I accept your apology. I know, you mean it as a term of evangelism, but I couldn’t pass it up!
Why is it that when people talk standards they always seem to want it to be the lower quality one. Spoon feeding the masses only keeps them children at the mercy of others.
“Spoon feeding the masses only keeps them children at the mercy of others.”
That sure explains the rock band, KISS.
dance monkey dance
Anything involving music that’s Windows only is bound to fail. And if songs are free, why are they DRM’d? None of this makes any sense.
@ OBill-Wan Kenobi
Did you think I was talking about modeling?
Cause I’ll bust a cap in Iman’s ass.
MW: ‘outside’ (now, not tomorrow)
@ BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots
And pray tell, why is it that the Armed Services had to lower their standards to fill their reduced quotas?
The Republi-NeoCons have seriously fscked our military. We may well be forced into reviving the draft just to get back to the pre-Shrub level of preparedness/capacity.
I tried it out tonight on a PC. Far too much of a hassle and not worth the aggravation. It was a waste of time to fight with it try to make it work.
@C1
Word.