Review of SpiralFrog's free music service

I am surprised this has not caught on, free but ad supported stuff is pretty much how TV makes a living.

I just wanted to say it tried it and it is a good service.

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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I am surprised this has not caught on, free but ad supported stuff is pretty much how TV makes a living.

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That was a very informative review, it's a pretty cool concept. I haven't DL music in a long time for various reasons but i might just give this a try.

Where are the ads? I've been a member since they launched. They make me renew my membership every 30 days. I have to answer a quick survey, but that's it. I don't see any ads.

I'm curious, what are the ads? Are they embedded in the music (at the begining or end of a song) or are they shown on the screen?

Is the music yours to keep? or is it like Napster? Can it be burned to disc or put on a DAP?

Usenet has them beat..by about 20 yrs.

Originally posted by windsong:

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Usenet has them beat..by about 20 yrs.

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Great idea, but really dumb name.

Originally posted by limelight:

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Great idea, but really dumb name.

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Iam like Rosedog, is it DRM free can you keep it and burn it to a disc?

Quote:

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Iam like Rosedog, is it DRM free can you keep it and burn it to a disc?

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I can see the amount of effort it appears to take to download a playlist could be considered cumbersome at the least. To have to go back and physically begin the next download could quickly become old. However I understand their desire to keep people looking at the ads since that is how they are supplying the music for free. This 'hassle' could be slightly alleviated by the ability to save a download queue so that if I get sidetracked or just tired of clicking I could come back later and resume where I left off. Nice to see that they may be addressing this issue in the near future. The double/triple (whatever lol) downloads to spread the tracks out to my other devices definately sucks. I presume this is more related to their business model and abilities being restricted by the payment requirements to the studios than anything else though.

All in all it's basically a subscription based model where the monthly fee is paid with my time as opposed to my money. I have stood behind the concept of subscription based models for the quite some time now. Subscriptions allow someone to build a collection at low cost (free re: spiralfrog), sample music they otherwise wouldn't have tried if they had to pay for it, and still allows someone to go out and by the tracks/albums they like if they decide they 'must' own something instead of what people like to term as renting it.

Of course this also doesn't touch upon the 'Fair Use 4 Windows Media' potential to strip the DRM out of the 'rentals'-- however low bitrate songs are not something I would be interested in 'owning' and so for my own tastes see this as a way to sample music legally/ethically, as opposed to the P2P route, before I decide to buy.

@ Vurbal: Good review. It answered pretty much all of the questions I had going into it. Thanks for the review and the info! I also fully agree that if the industry thinks they are going to fund and build a new business model soley on the backs of their customers via h/w and s/w devs they really haven't learned anything these past couple of years.

--cheers!

I rather listen to Jango...Jango.com if ya'll dont know!

i just went to the jango site.bloody awesome.maybe its just me but i dont see myself going to a site to download songs i cant save to a cd when there are so many radio stations and sites like jango to go to.

I guess I'll give this service a shot for a bit. I listen to the majority of my music on my iPod though, so it won't be particularly useful...

Wow. 45 minutes later I finally get the first track I downloaded off spiralfrog to play. I open iTunes because I really don't want to listen to the song I just downloaded and I get the error message, "Components of iTunes missing, please reinstalling."

...This comes after having to install windows media player for stupid Spiral Frog.

Oh, and Spiral Frog has crashed Firefox 7 times already.


Thumbs down.

Originally posted by rosedog:

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I'm curious, what are the ads? Are they embedded in the music (at the begining or end of a song) or are they shown on the screen?

Is the music yours to keep? or is it like Napster? Can it be burned to disc or put on a DAP?

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Originally posted by ZippyDSM:

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I am surprised this has not caught on, free but ad supported stuff is pretty much how TV makes a living.

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