p2pnet - rss feed: SpiralFrog ‘free’ downloads
p2pnet.net News:- The Big Four record labels will do anything, anything, rather than work up front with their customers and with the independent innovators who are, so far, wholly and solely responsible for turning p2p into the primary communications and distribution media for the digital 21st century.
They’d rather sue them. But enormous and continuing opposition from the music monopolies notwithstanding, the indies and p2p networks survive, meaning music lovers have for years been able to satisfy their unyielding passion and thirst for music, entertainment, and information.
Now Froggie Would A Wooing Go takes on a new meaning. Something called SpiralFrog is lurching in with Big Four Organized Music cartel founder-member Vivendi Universal to offer (you guessed it) a, “secure environment where music lovers can satisfy their unyielding passion and thirst for music, entertainment, and information”.
“Secure” means users won’t be terrorized and/or sued by the RIAA or any of the dozens of other Big Four ‘trade’ organizations such as the IFPI, BPI, CIRA, ARIA, and so on and etc
The Frog will force users to sit through brain-dead advertisements before they can download, and the songs will polluted with Microsoft WMA DRM (Digital Restriction Management) so they won’t play on Apple iPods which isn’t, of course, anything new.
Naturally, sharing will be strictly forbidden. Froggers will also have to allow alien anti-p2p software into their computers to stop them from making copies of tunes they download, share them or burn them.
They’ll also have to re-qualify by checking in at the Frog’s site every month. If they don’t, access will be cut off.
Significantly, former RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) boss Jay Berman is at the top of the Frog directors list. He’s the ‘Berman’ in Berman Rosen Global Strategies with protege Hilary Rosen, another ex-RIAA boss, as the Rosen.
And to further digress, “Jay Berman was also on the board of Loudeye, owner of Overpeer the spoofing company that planted spoofed recordings on the web to the annoyance of music consumers and the amusement of unauthorised sites who increased their value as traffic increased to cope,” a p2pnet reader commented, also pointing out, “Unfortunately cheating music consumers with fake recordings wasn’t a long term business propostion with Overpeer recently closed down.”
Anyway, “Offering young consumers an easy-to-use alternative to pirated music sites will be compelling,” states Frog ceo Robin Kent. The target audience is people between aged 13 to 34, “an advertiser’s dream,” as he states it.
Older users can, presumably, go fish.
Warner Music, EMI and Sony BMG, the other three members of the Big Four cartel, will be watching keenly.
Will significant numbers of the hundreds of millions of people who currently steer well clear of the paltry, over-priced corporate offerings, preferring the p2p networks and indie sites, now switch to the Frog site?
Not a hope.
Interestingly, Kazaa is expected to introduce a free-with-advertising service, “when it reintroduces itself as a licensed, legitimate distribution business,” says The New York Times.
Sharman Networks recently achieved its ambition of years by ’settling’ with the cartels and as p2pnet said, “the deal with the Big Four also means Kazaa will be resuscitated“.
SpiralFrog hops into North America in December, and into the UK close to the start of 2007.
Also See:
Global Strategies - The Rosen, Berman duo, February 2, 2006
The New York Times - Universal Backs Free Music Rival to iTunes, August 29, 2006
ambition of years - Kazaa owner’s DRM plan, August 4, 2006
resuscitated - Nikki Hemming Q&A, August 28, 2006
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August 30th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Jay Berman is also on the Board of a Commercial p2p company
Reasearch it .
August 31st, 2006 at 3:00 am
Let’s NOT miss this major Point !!!! Let’s take a good look at this free ad supported site???? Put up with our BS ad’s and get free downloads???? BUT I thought FREE downloads were Killing the music Biz??? Isn’t that the reason the Riaa was suing people???? Why if you can get it for Free why buy the CD or Pay for a download at various music sites??? Isn’t that the LIE the Riaa has been saying for the last 4 years
to justify suing everybody and their dog so as to stop all the filesharing and Free downloads. so the music Biz can make a buck!!! It seem that if the Major Label’s hookup with this SpiralFrog they will be cutting their own throat’s. Free downloads= no sales or reduced sales??? If all the Major Label’s get on board with SprialFrog it will only prove that everything they have said in the past about filesharing is a LIE !! So what’ if you have to jump though some whoop’s you will be getting FREE MUSIC!!!! Isn’t that the reason the Riaa was suing people????
August 31st, 2006 at 8:22 am
I don’t think you’re seeing the bigger picture. There is a cost associated with producing the ‘product’ as you insist on calling it. To recoup this cost there must be some source of revenue. So advertising and making the product available for free (not for free use) is a good start. Or do you disagree and are now going to start a campaign to make television advertising free? I know that you can ignore adverts on TV a little easier as there is no user input required, but I believe this is a good start.
It would be nice to sit through advertising and then have the product free of all DRM, but this is a good first step. To just rubbish the idea before you have all the details is a little immature. Shouldn’t we wait and have a look at the EULA before jumping in?
And one other point - they won’t play on an iPod? What’s the problem there? This should help to bring down Apples market share with their restricitve fair play DRM.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, there has to be compromise somewhere along the line. If both camps take completely opposing views and refuse to make concessions then you’re doomed to failure.
August 31st, 2006 at 1:26 pm
“The fact you may suspect this, and of course I have my own concerns regarding it too, is no reason to state it as fact.”
I agree with your message to some extent. However, the industry has a pretty bad track record overall when you look at it. When it comes to human behaviour, the worst of it will always win out; greed, corruption, lies, you name it. There is only one thing that I can see ever working out for everyone. We now live in an age where intellectual property has dropped to near zero. The industry has to reduce the cost of buying entertainment by a lot, to more reasonable expectations, and they have to ditch the feeble attempts at controlling consumers through things like DRM, region controls, and so on. I’ve always said, as has Jon occasionally in his news postings, that we consumers are perfectly resonable folk, people who would be more than happy to part with our hard earned money if only the industry treated us fairly. I know that if I could buy music in a good format (lossless preferably, after all quality is as important here as with anything else), without DRM, and for a far more reasonable price than things are right now, that I would be broke all the time. I guarentee you that that is no lie, and the same easily goes for my wife too. What the industry looses by dropping prices as much as they clearly need to, they would gain back in volume a hundred fold I’m sure(the ill will they have generated so far not withstanding). However, that all time favorite sin we call greed, which our civilization seems to be solely based upon, runs insanely rampant through out the entertainment industry (never seen anything worse in my life to be honest), and because of that they’ve earned a boycott from the family and I instead. I swear, some corporate bozo must have done a cost benefit analysis betweem doing what I propose vs simply suing people, and suing people came out as the winner which would net them the most cash. Doesn’t matter that what they’re doing, and especially how they go about it, is obviously wrong, bordering on evil. But I digress; so easy to do that when ones ire is raised so high lol. Like you say, this story is a start at least. Problem is that based on history, which has a nasty tendency to repeat itself (primarily because people refuse to change), I highly doubt this is going to work out in the end. Especially when the opportunity to abuse the consumers faith will be right there just ready and waiting to be misued. It will happen, as it always does when greed is the primary motivator behind any kind of project that should otherwise have been a good idea. Never underestimate the power of stupid either.
“Everything has a cost.”
Not true, and you know it.
September 1st, 2006 at 6:56 am
“And the fact of the matter is if you are getting access to free media (minus the cost of your time) then are some restrictions not to be expected?”
No.
Restrictions are not to be expected, and they are certainly not to be tolerated. These files are doubtlessly protected with some pretty serious rights-removing DRM, which will require software support, i.e., things to be installed - and which will thus almost certainly doom it to the status of a curiosity.
“…when something is effectively free (of cost) I don’t see why you can complain when restrictions on what you can do with it are put in place.”
H*ll, yes, we can complain! I know what I should be able to do with a song - I should be able to move it to another format, or other media, or even just to a playback device that is more convenient to me. The idea that it was “free” (modulo time spent ignoring an advertisement) is not enough to convince me to say “Oh well, that’s all right then, it was free, anyway” and give those up - much less to convince me that I should install the software on my machine that takes them away.
September 1st, 2006 at 10:27 am
I see. So free as in beer isn’t good enough. It must be free as in beer and speech? I understand that if I pay for something it should be free as in speech, but if I receive something for no money I don’t see the problem.
Now, with regards to invasive DRM, we do have to wait and see exactly what they’re going to encumber this with before making our conclusions.
September 5th, 2006 at 4:49 am
It’s time to introduce the concept of negative value here.
If the company simply gave you the file at a true zero cost, and then sternly admonished you that you must not share it or burn it to CD (and you could), that would be one thing. Instead, they plan to use some form of software to enforce that you don’t do these things - software that will have to live on the machine where you acquire the music, at least, and that may have other, unforeseen effects - and they also would like to require that you watch an advertisement.
That’s not “zero cost.” You’re not paying with currency - you’re paying by accepting items with negative value. I’d go with “libre” in that case.
And you’d like to “wait and see what they’re going to encumber this with”? You don’t find software that keeps you from sharing a file, or burning it to CD, to be invasive?
Interesting.