Vivendi Universal and Spiral Frog have teamed up for yet another entry into the legal, DRM crippled music market. Spiral Frog, set to launch in December of this year, will be a "free" ad supported service with the --debatably absurd -- goal of competing with peer to peer file sharing. According to The Daily Mail, "By being completely free, Spiral-Frog's service represents a departure from Apple's popular iTunes online store - which charges per music track - and other legal download services, which have a subscription fee."
True enough, however, doesn't this miss the point? I've not often heard complaints about the price of music download services, it's not the price point that anyone has issue with. Quite opposite, I constantly hear from readers who would be more than happy to pay the 99 cent price per track, and in some cases more, only for non-DRM crippled and high quality files.
If you ask me -- and no one did -- ad supported services like Spiral Frog only exacerbate the problem by offering false evidence that alternative models don't work. The ad supported side of Napster has been a dismal failure, and only serves to prove that diminished quality and free don't satisfy a consumer need.
[via The Daily Mail]
Update: Is Spiral Frog an end run around royalty payments?
1. Spiralfrog is a good idea as for 99 cent per song is a little extreme! for if you buy 10 songs it comes to $9.90 and for students and children who have to buy there own songs for there ipod/mp3's means there whole allowence has been spent on a few songs ... its about time someone made free legal music downloading and spiral frog will start a new generation of download.
Posted at 5:15AM on Aug 31st 2006 by poppanda