Free online music? iTunes shouldn't be worried
An ad-supported free music site, Spiralfrog is due to launch in September. At the moment it will only offer Universal's catalogue but apparently they are in talks with other major record companies.
The idea is that you are supposed to navigate through ninety seconds worth of ad-supported content for every song that you wish to download. Oh yeah, and the downloads won't work on your iPod and you can't play them through iTunes. There are two things that I find very disturbing about this. First the term: "navigate through content". Ninety seconds does not sound like a long time but:
a) This is subject to change and publishers will always seek to cram as much advertising as possible in front of their audience.
b) It's apparently ninety seconds per song.
If we look at the brightside we can see that this is technically a good development. It shows that the music industry is at least willing to look at options other than taking college boys to court in an effort to combat content pirates. However this current model likely has too many flaws to become a real contender. Why would I force myself to sit through a whole lot of advertising to get a song that I can't even play on an iPod? I can get the song I want, in the format I want for less than a buck.
Spiralfrog aren't the only ones getting into the game, either. AOL has relaunched its subscription music service as part of its massive repurposing effort (that makes gender reassignment look like clipping your toenails) towards becoming an online content provider. They are offering unlimited downloads for $10 or $15 a month. And you can play the files on your portable media player. This is much more like it.
Of course, it does rely on the media consumer's sense of propriety not to share the legally downloaded files once they have paid their subscriptions and got the content they were after. Clearly that's not going to be the case for every subscriber. But this is still a serviceable business model. As a general rule, people don't mind paying for things they want. Getting something for free doesn't mean I'm saving anything. Why would I want a music track that I can't play on my portable media player?
If a homeless man throws up in a paper bag and hands it to me saying "It's free and it's kinda food" I'm still not going to take it. (Probably.) The same is the case here.
Methinks the ultimate solution will end up being somewhere in the middle: readily available, ad-supported content that is actually usable and free to download -or ad-free content that I can either pay for by subscription or per download.
The first site to get this business model to work is the one that can start to take on iTunes.
The idea is that you are supposed to navigate through ninety seconds worth of ad-supported content for every song that you wish to download. Oh yeah, and the downloads won't work on your iPod and you can't play them through iTunes. There are two things that I find very disturbing about this. First the term: "navigate through content". Ninety seconds does not sound like a long time but:
a) This is subject to change and publishers will always seek to cram as much advertising as possible in front of their audience.
b) It's apparently ninety seconds per song.
If we look at the brightside we can see that this is technically a good development. It shows that the music industry is at least willing to look at options other than taking college boys to court in an effort to combat content pirates. However this current model likely has too many flaws to become a real contender. Why would I force myself to sit through a whole lot of advertising to get a song that I can't even play on an iPod? I can get the song I want, in the format I want for less than a buck.
Spiralfrog aren't the only ones getting into the game, either. AOL has relaunched its subscription music service as part of its massive repurposing effort (that makes gender reassignment look like clipping your toenails) towards becoming an online content provider. They are offering unlimited downloads for $10 or $15 a month. And you can play the files on your portable media player. This is much more like it.
Of course, it does rely on the media consumer's sense of propriety not to share the legally downloaded files once they have paid their subscriptions and got the content they were after. Clearly that's not going to be the case for every subscriber. But this is still a serviceable business model. As a general rule, people don't mind paying for things they want. Getting something for free doesn't mean I'm saving anything. Why would I want a music track that I can't play on my portable media player?
If a homeless man throws up in a paper bag and hands it to me saying "It's free and it's kinda food" I'm still not going to take it. (Probably.) The same is the case here.
Methinks the ultimate solution will end up being somewhere in the middle: readily available, ad-supported content that is actually usable and free to download -or ad-free content that I can either pay for by subscription or per download.
The first site to get this business model to work is the one that can start to take on iTunes.
posted by Gordon White at 1:21 pm
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