Question: What are the downsides of SpiralFrog’s Launch?

Answer: As I discussed several days ago, the largest of the music companies, Universal Music Group, announced it will offer free music downloads as part of their new startup SpiralFrog. Various other music labels are currently negotiating with SpiralFrog. I report again on the expected December release of SpiralFrog after both the New York Times and various bloggers brought many important fine print items to my attention. The ‘free’ service supported by advertisements is not all it’s cracked up to be.

- Your music will be in WMA format so you cannot put the songs onto an iPod or CD.

- You have to go to the SpiralFrog web site each and every month to view advertisements (become an ad drone) or the songs you’ve downloaded will expire.

- You have to listen to a 90 second audio commercial every time you download. What a pain!

- The files you download expire after six months. Forget the days when you had Napster Unlimited (illegal downloads) and were able to build a list of 20,000 songs. After six months you’ll have to download every song again and listen to more ads.

The New York Times also reports that Kazaa will be relaunching later this year with a business model similar to SpiralFrog’s - free music downloads supported by ‘ad drone’ viewing. Napster and Rhapsody already offer free unlimited listening for monthly fees but they are also experimenting with the ‘ad drone’ type of music download.

With all of the restrictions above, who will take the time to listen to a 90 second commercial just to get a few songs for free? Most of us would rather slam down the $9.99 at BestBuy for all 15 tracks. What really makes me upset is all the media frenzy surrounding SpiralFrog’s upcoming release. The media has been over simplifying the ‘get free music for watching ads’ concept.

Here’s another problem with SpiralFrog. For every 40 music downloads on the internet, only 1 is legally downloaded. From a business standpoint, the people who are going to be downloading and using SpiralFrog’s software will likely be that 1/40 who are already downloading legally and only want to find a cheaper way to download music. Instead of paying $0.99 per download they figure they can download songs for free just by viewing ads. But how do we target the 39/40 people who will continue to use Torrents and ICQ to exchange music?

I remember years back when I used to ‘get paid to surf the internet’ with All Advantage. Hackers and techies quickly figured out how to break the code and ‘get paid for sleeping’. That was years ago. What SpiralFrog is doing is not very innovative. It’s an age old concept applied to music downloads. Think about the TiVo trend, satellite radio, and television in general. No one sits around through the commercials and completely pays attention to them. They either:

- Change the channel (channel surf)

- Do something else.

- Talk about what they just saw with friends and family.

What SpiralFrog is doing has been done before. If you’re like me, you’re in that 39/40 people bracket that downloads music illegally or just buys a cd when it comes out in the stores. Share your thoughts in the comments below.