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imeem.com

last.fm

spiralfrog.com

deezer.com

qtrax.com

And that's even before we get to the ones of questionable legality like muxtape and projectplaylist Yet p2p sharing of music is still huge, youtube and its clones seems to have made a big difference in the amount of movie sharing via p2p, why haven't the music sites done the same?

just a note: it's http://www.spiralfrog.com/ and not http://spiralfrog.com/ (which appears to be a ... typosquat?).

just a note: it's http://www.spiralfrog.com/ and not http://spiralfrog.com/ (which appears to be a ... typosquat?).

Spiralfrog already offers 'DRM' tied downloads supported by advertising for some major labels, the downloads can be copied to 'plays for sure' media players but not burned to CD. Of course because it uses windows DRM its Windows + Internet Explorer only Meanwhile imeem AKA 'youtube for music' lets you stream music uploaded by its users, providing the music is licensed from Sony, BMG, Warners or one of their other partners, it's a cooler approach in some ways because the user generated side of things gives you access to stuff that would never be heard on a catalog driven site. It works in any browser with a flash plugin so it's totally multiplatform, providing you just want to listen rather than download(and rate, comment, tag and all those other social things).

Why aren't more people using SpiralFrog? Absolutely free music (because of an ad generated revenue model) with recognisable/big name bands. Nice easy interface... just discovered it this morning and I've been downloading stuff like crazy.

Did I mention it's FREE?

Going to chime in on the "great" editing on this story and the Slashdot blurb. How the frak MP3s won't play on the iPod got through I'll never no. In point of fact the article only says MP3 players and that "Apple's wildly popular iPod MP3 players" won't be able to play them. From Sprialfrogs support link: http://www.spiralfrog.com/pages/support.aspx They clearly state "We require you to be running Windows XP or Vista at SpiralFrog for the simple reason that Windows Digital Rights Management is the only standard available for independent music stores like us to protect the songs and videos as required by the record labels' licenses." Which should come as no surprise since any method to limit burning and playing requires some form of DRM which is not compatible with the MP3 spec. Sprialfrog also says "Windows Digital Rights Management is not supported by Apple Macintosh computers. Macintosh supports the AAC Digital Rights Management, but it is closed to Apple's own use only." Well it's not supported by Apple no. On the other hand Apple isn't preventing someone from making an application that does support it. Would it work with iPods? No. But would it work with all the other MP3 players on the market? Very probably. So this caveat is an exercise in lazyness.

Not an MP3, its Windows Media. Apparently DRM10 or 11.

http://www.spiralfrog.com/pages/faq.aspx

Music will soon be free, you just have to watch ads as it downloads.

1- Missing url for SpiralFrog
2- Music files WILL be playable on a portable player.

I will. According to SpiralFrog.com, the service is due out in December 2006. The site doesn't have much info on whether DRM is used or not or much info at all.