RSSUniversal: Watch Ads, Get Free Music
by Ed Oswald
Music label Universal has taken steps to allow consumers to listen to its artists legally for free by signing an agreement with new music store entrant SpiralFrog. The service, which plans to launch later this year, would allow users to download songs for free in exchange for viewing or acting upon advertising shown to that user.
The label's catalog includes popular artists such as U2, Gwen Stefani and the Roots. The agreement would cover SpiralFrog's planned services in both the US and Canada. The Web-based service uses digital rights management technology to protect the audio and video content from being shared.
"Offering young consumers an easy-to-use alternative to pirated music sites will be compelling," said Robin Kent, the company's CEO said in a statement. "SpiralFrog will offer those consumers a better experience and environment than they can get from any pirate site."
The company plans to target the 13-to-34 age segment in its advertising. Revenue raised from advertisers would not only be used to pay for content which users download, but also would be split with the record labels with which SpiralFrog partners under the company's business model.
Advertisers say such a business model allows them to reach their customers through mediums they know their customers use on a regular basis.
"Our audience is heavily into music and can be more easily reached on the web," Vice-Chairman, President and COO at Perry Ellis Oscar Feldenkreis said. "We see SpiralFrog as an ideal place for us to communicate and build lasting relationships with our core audience and which give us unique new revenue opportunities."
7 Comments
the benefit of technology which can simply and and almost instantly, faithfully reproduce music far outweighs any advantage which copyright ever gave to the world, copyright was originally created to promote science, it has been hijacked by the few rich who seem to own all these days. music is part of being human and aught to be free
Artists should make their money from concerts and merchantizing, posters ads etc. DRM makes spiralfrog only partially interesting, some will probably love it as it means they will be able to get hold of tracks they like.. however too many ads will turn most back to other sources of music the way it should be
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Anyone know if the Froggy media will have DRM? If so, kids aren't gunna be interested. I know DRM stuff would be useless for me.
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2nd paragraph
last sentance
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Better experience and environment? Yeah right ...
NB: I mean when compared to "piracy" in the way that they mean it: music acquired through P2P with no profit being made on the part of the distributor.
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Don't support the RIAA until they end their reprehensible tactics of bullying people via the court system.
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We seem to be rapidly moving towards an economy where we can get something free in return for watching an advertisement for something else that we could probably get for free.
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Death SpiralFrog... Their logo looks like amphibian roadkill. :-D
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