In a blog post about tour dates on the Barenaked Ladies site, Steven Page gives his thoughts on Spiral Frog.
"On a totally unrelated note, have you heard about SpiralFrog yet? It's Universal Music's attempt to deal with the new world of music, and it seems downright bizarre to me. Basically, they're saying you can have all this music for free, but you can only keep it on your computer and one other device. That kind of maniacal need for control is what will be the death of major labels. If they continue to stop people from listening to music in the way they want it, people will continue to make other choices. I think that labels need to stop the restrictive and manipulative use of DRM, and, frankly, we should legalize P2P, and have it properly licensed from the ISP level (sure, the ISPs will complain, but, let them complain)."
Page has an incredible precision for cutting through the hype. He's been an outspoken critic of the recording industry lawsuits. He's right about the schizophrenic nature of this offering.What bugs me is, I've still found or heard no answer to my question; Will the artists receive any compensation or, will these be written off as promotional copies?
[BNL Blog via Michael Geist]
1. I agree the music labels are greedy but how do you make sure the artists would get paid for every copy that is shared p2p? I find it pretty interesting that an artist would be pushing for legalizing something that will essentially take away 95% of his revenue. :/
Posted at 5:06PM on Sep 11th 2006 by Jeff