Slashdot Mirror
Universal to Offer Music for Free
wild_berry writes "The BBC reports that Universal Music has signed a deal to make its music available for a free and legally-licensed download. Available from a new music site called SpiralFrog, the deal will allow users in the USA and Canada to listen to Universal's music, which Reuters' news site reveals is paid for by targeted advertising, but no details of possible community or playlist sharing features of the SpiralFrog service. Is the immunity from litigation enough to make up for having targeted advertising on each page and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?"
Well, that's good news.
Now if only I were a fan of some of Universal's Artists.
Guess I'll have to wait and see if the big companies follow suit.
My work here is dung.
Mr Kent, the former head of the Universal McCann advertising agency, added that his research suggested that in return for free music, young people would be willing to endure adverts - as long as the brands and products were relevant to them.
I am one of the young people he speaks of, because I would more than willingly parse thru adverts in order to get free music, as opposed to having to pay for it.
I've tried to take a stand against ads myself. I'll subscribe to whatever I need, as long as I don't see ads. The way I see it, subscribing to slashdot (for example) puts money towards content and away from useless ad people. The only ads I want to see are when I do a google search. That's it! I'd rather subscribe (or even better, donate). I'm sick of the ad culuture, and it's got to stop. I won't be using this free music source because I already subscribed to Urge (plays for sure). At least more of that money is going to artists. With this, you have all sorts of ad brokers taking a cut.
So when they realize we are able to copy the music, what happens?
Someone please post a suitable proxy =o)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Yes.
Ads are only a minor issue, I have seen ads all my life I know how to ignore them.
The proponets of free content will whine... but this way the record company gets what they want (money) and the consumer gets free (of cost) music.
Nothing ever has been truely free, if you aren't buying (or stealing) something someone else is paying to put it in your hands for there own reasons. That is the way the world has worked for a long time.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Cost isn't the main issue I have with digital music. Freedom is the main issue.
I want to be able to play the music that I purchase on whatever device I choose. Period.
If I can't do that, then I won't participate in the service.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Who says that users will not be able to put the music on their portable media players or burn the tracks to CD?
What they are really saying is that they will let you try listening to their music without paying for it first. If you want to do anything with it, you have to pay.
Which isn't a bad idea, acutally...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I wonder how long it will take them to work the ads into the audio files themselves. 3 minutes of music sandwiched between 2 30 second commercials is probably inevitable.
TFA doesn't say anything about whether or not the music in question is DRM-encumbered. I see no reason at all to believe that it won't be.
So while the music may be free as in beer, it'll likely only be free in the most limited sense of the word.
Thanks, but I'll pass.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
RTFA, please. At least the first sentence:
Universal Music, the world's largest music company, has agreed to back a new venture that will allow consumers to download songs for free and instead rely on advertising for its revenues.
This is a big deal.
What an Excellent name, put the frogs in a lukewarm pot, and slowly increase the temperature. Pretty much, the sheeple will get used to getting things for "free", by accepting "targetted" ads.
All they have to do to get these "free" things, is release tons of personally identifiable information.
Just look at gmail/hotmail/etc.
Anyone can read/datamine your mail , etc.
Welcome to 1984, all hail big-brother.
I've wondered how long it would be before a consultant somewhere said, 'you know, we should adapt or we risk dying', and this is what it is, finally a company with a financial interest in the matter is sitting down and trying to hash out an idea of how to make the new medium work for them.
I will probably go watch some ands and not hear the music (as it will probably require windows) just to show support for a company that is taking some initiative. I hope it makes them billions of dollars and all the other companies sit and wonder why they didn't think of it.
"Is the immunity from litigation enough to make up for having targeted advertising on each page and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?"
I like to listen to my music in the car, while I'm going to sleep, as I'm reading a book, whatever. I want it indexed, in my format-du-jour (currently flac), and I want it on whatever device is handy. This does not provide that.
However, there are other times when I don't want to listen to my music. I might get a sudden urge to listen to some random song that I don't normally care about, want to check out a band, or want to simply show someone else a song I found but don't have handy. This is when I use things like Purevolume and (God forbid) Myspace. If this provides a similar service, then yes, I will gladly endure advertising to listen to the music. A service like this can only complement my music collection though, not replace it.
Having switched over to Linux, my primary concenr with this site is will this service work on Linux? Given that the songs are bound to be DRM laddened, I find this unlikely. And even though its free as in beer, the song selection sounds like it will be very limited,at least for now. (I only saw a couple of bands I would possibly listen to in the list of Universal's Artists.)
Almost as stupid as http://music.edu.org/
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that this is the same doomed business model of the dot-com bubble?
Does Universal actually expect to make money off this, or is this a "straw man" venture designed to fail in order to show shareholders and politicians that strict DRM is necessary to guarantee profitability?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
The ads are probably 30 second annoying junk you have to listen to before the song starts and of course, the list of artists is probably not very good. I can imagine they will put all the lame artists that they are trying to promote on this program and reserve the *good* ones for 30 second samples that you only get to listen to after 30 seconds of ads.
Is the immunity from litigation enough to make up for having targeted advertising on each page and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?"
As if you even needed immunity from litigation, or you had some intrinsic right to this music. The only people that need immunity from litigation are those breaking the law
Here's a content producer. They want to GIVE you their content for free online, in a distribution model simliar to one that most of slashdot has been having wet dreams about since Napster 1.0 was released. Shit know when you got it good and stop your bitchin lol!
If someone wants to give me something for free I'm not going to whine just because they want me to do a certain thing with it - free restricted music is better than no music at all...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Both articles are a little scarce with exactly what you can do with the music.
Is it like Yahoo's service, where you can "download" the song and play it whenever you like, but you can't burn it to a CD? And if you want to move it to an external drive, you have to pay extra?
Or will this be a complete file that can be downloaded to my PC and media-shifted? (preferrably CD-burnable, and I'm sure someone will figure out how to get around whatever DRM they put on it).
I've used Yahoo music and now Urge subscription. It's quite annoying when your player barfs on you because you haven't tethered (the smaller devices can play on battery much longer than the cutoff point it seems). But still I use it--because I can get any song I want. I use it on my phone, which is always with me (8125).
I like freedom too, but this is the compromise I make. As I've said before, I don't want to support ad people.
This is a pretty good idea. Seems like it is based on the Real Rhapsody model (which is worth the $9.99 / mo to listen to as much as you want) except that the streaming is free.
It will be like on demand radio, and if I like a tune, I'll buy it.
Good for Universal, they seem to 'get it'
My knee-jerk reaction was "Of course not", but this actually makes sense. At least now the "I only pirate to decide whether to buy it" crowd has no excuse any more.
the analog loophole, eh?
With Audacity, one can record using the setting "What U Hear" which records not from the mic, but from the output of the soundcard. Encode to MP3, burn CD, sync to iPod, there ya go.
"...not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?"
Oh yeah? Watch me!
I can finally download Lindsay Lohan's albums instead of being THAT guy who buys them at the store. Now, if we could only get Hanson to sign with Universal the circle would be complete.
I say we just grow up, be adults and die.
You don't need to look online for the free-due-to-advertising model. There have been advertisers giving away free, unrelated product for decades, if not centuries in return for eyeballs. Ever listen to the radio, or watch TV? People are already used to this stuff...the water is already boiling.
Aside: Advertisers are the scourge of the earth, and they may actually rank _below_ lawyers, as at least some lawyers are honest. No, I haven't met one personally, but they supposedly exist whereas there are no honest advertisers almost by definition. Advertisers are at the root of most sports-related inflation. They get owners addicted to the cash like heroin, then claim they need to have more and more exposure to geep that cash coming. as the money filters down, everybody gets greedy, and you end up with $8 beers, $5 hot dogs, $300 bleacher seats, and some guy who can't even spell his name making $80M over 4 years right out of college because he can run a 4.2 40 and throw a pigskin 80 yards.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Pay vs adverts?
What most people will continue to do is ignore itunes and spiralfrog and simply continue downloading the music for free.
Deleted
I really don't get downloading music. Sure it's cheap, but it's not at the bitrate or in the codec I want.
What form will this free music be in, 128k WMA?
Summation 2
"...and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player"
I just took a look over @ VegasBigBoard, & the odds of that remaining a true statement for more than one month are level; less than one month is holding at 16:1; less than one week just moved up from 4:1 to 6 1/2.
I considered waiting and coming in when one week hit double-digits, but decided on a hedge and dropped some now, just to make it entertaining...
That they have withdrawn there support of RIAA suing or is that just wishful thinking?
AAC is Apple-only. WMA has been cracked. What are they going to use for DRM? Sony ATRAC? (UGH!!!!)
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
I don't really care 3 Doors Down or Godsmack. Elton John is ok, his album Honky Tonk Chatau is in my collection. He used to write some amazing bluesy Rock and Roll that actually felt like music. His later crap is ... well ... crap in my opinion.
If you want to know who I listen to, it's a very wide variety but I must confess I'm more prone to listen to local bands in the states, UK or Canada. Bands like The Unicorns (now Islands), Spoon, Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzales, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, Apollo Sunshine, The Decemberists, Ok Go, The Golden Republic, etc. I really appreciate indie rock these days. Prior to that, all I lisened to was jazz, blues and classical. Anyone from popular artists like David Bowie, Bob Dylan & The Beatles to Nick Drake, Procul Harum & rare works. I'll always enjoy Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thad Jones, etc. And the classical artists I enjoy are seemingly infinite.
I see that Dispatch is a Universal artist and I love them so maybe there will be some songs I will go there for. I just hope it's all done in reasonable quality and doesn't require a standalone client application that I have to install. I hate those things.
My work here is dung.
This is an attempt to bring the old business model of terrestrial radio to the Internet. It's no different than listening to a commercial radio station's Internet stream, apart from the lack of cheesy locally-produced ads for Slappy's Bait Shop and Ice Cream Stand.
For those unfamiliar with Terrestrial Radio, it's that thing with all the monopolies that is being pummeled by the more interesting stuff on Internet Radio and Satellite Radio.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Let me listen to the songs on my computer so I know if I like them enough to spend money, and when I do I'll buy the CD. Recently I went hunting for Power Metal bands (they're getting hard to find w/o mp3.com :( ) and couldn't find one band who didn't have either 30 second clips or edited their posted songs because, god forbid, I listen to an mp3 instead of buying their record. That might work for a truely excellant band like Freedom Call or Hammerfall, but for a middling band just hitting it's stride? It's just hard to get excited about a 30 second clip, and having the band yell at me "don't steal this mp3" half way through doesn't help either.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...you've invented radio!
Why hasn't the product placement concept come to music yet? Since people are downloading music for free from all kinds of sources and there is no stop to it, why not put the advertising in the music? I can't imagine that Brittany Spears would complain about having to incorporate "Coke" or "Victoria's Secret" into a song. Here is an example product placement in a popular song:
I am going to the corner, gonna buy some iPod bling.
Would you pardon me if it's a black 60 gigabyte t'ing
Good golly, miss Molly, sure like to ball.
When you're rockin' and a rollin' can't hear your momma call.
--- What?
You made the 1.6 millionth post.
Given the quality of music us Brits seem to enjoy they should change to
Crazy Frog
ding ding dididing....
Summation 2
MediUM! "Music industry legal specialist" indeed...
Now the artists have absolutely NO WAY to recoup royalties from their label. Since the money generated from this service is derived from Advertising, and NOT the sale of the music, the artist is officially screwed. If some artists had the power they could re-negotiate their contract to include this, but since most are locked in (and still trying to pay back the massive advances from the label) they won't.
I have nothing clever to put here...
and not being able to write the music to CD or a portable player?
Not for me. I'd rather pay for the convenience of freely usable music than get usage-restricted tracks for free.
Cheers.
..what format the ads will be in. Java? Flash?
We'll have to see if Mike's ad-blocking hosts file will strip them.
Here's a listing of Universal's lables and a partial list of their artists.
Too bad the jazz artists suck, with the exception of Herbie Hancock.
Both links pop in new browsers.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
They have some DRM scheme, probably WMA, on these files - the article mentions that people will need to visit the site once a month to maintain access to their downloads. That means that this won't work on an iPod, which means that some 80% of the market is already excluded. At whom exactly is this targeted?
It's called an FM radio. I have one in my car, and it downloads music to my brain whenever I drive. Unfortunately, my brain seems to have a problem with the "delete" function. I can't delete that copy of "Hollaback Girl" I downloaded a few months back. Not only that, my mental media player is stuck on repeat right at that part with trombone slide. Someone please help!
The buggy^H^H^H^H^Hrecord companies should close down, liquidate their assets before it's all blown on futile attempts to control digital information. The artists should get into their vans, tour to promote themselves and sell downloads online at 10c a pop.
Whether you believe it's right or wrong is irrelevant, the economic reality is that as the supply of something increases, the value of it drops and digital information being trivially copyable has an infinite supply. The value of digital information (any digital information) will tend towards zero, that means ebooks, music, audio, video, software. The idea that digital information can be a product is economically naive, it can only be a service.
Record companies which try to fight this new reality are doing their shareholders a disservice, they either have to completely re-invent themselves as a service which provides low cost digital information or they should return their value to their shareholders as soon as possible.
Deleted
What is the usual chorus of self-justification we hear from pirates?
"I pirate to try out bands for free - I buy new bands all the time by discovering them this way, so I should be allowed to pirate because the artist makes money!"
"I only get stuff I wouldn't have paid for anyway, so no one's losing money anyway."
"I want to listen to music where I want, and if I can't pay and maintain all my rights, then I won't pay and will simply pirate the music!"
Well, since this is free and semi-portable (i.e. any web-accessable computer, but not your car/at the beach), none of the above arguements hold water - you can try out bands for free (I'm not taking the bait on arguements over what version of the word 'free' we're using...), you can try out stuff you wouldn't have paid for anyway, and while you can't listen to it anyplace-in-space, you aren't losing rights you paid for (since you didn't pay.)
This looks like a good thing, and a smart play from the music industry - attack piracy justifications by making them irrelevant. If it's less-than-perfect by your definition, you don't have to play, and the topography of the game doesn't change (other than undercutting piracy justifiactions.)
Keep in mind that piracy!=filesharing!=breaking DRM - all those aspects are separate (and I'd argue, straw men against this specific point.)
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
Finally someone at a record company gets it. If other music companies jump in and they don't screw it up....this will be the end of piracy and iTunes as we know them. Why pirate? Because its free. Its free over at Spiralfrog. But... well... yeah. Part of why piracy works is because a large group of people say, "Screw the record company, I want a free copy." If you can get a free copy from the record company a huge segment of the the crowd goes away. Your left with a small crowd that want it at a special bitrate in a special format. The smaller that group gets, and it will get smaller, the harder it will be to find the songs you want. The harder it gets to find the songs you want the more people will leave that crowd and go to the the sponsored site. There will always be a small crowd of pirates, but the huge masses of them will go away because it will be easier to get it through the sponsored site.
Is he strong? Listen bud, He's got radioactive blood.
So now, instead of "stealing" when I download music without permission, I will be "stealing" when I skip the ads without permission, right? Just checking.
I've got a MUCH better idea, RIAA. How about, instead, we just skip the ads altogether? No, really. I'll just download the music like I did before. You pretend you sent some ads to me, and I'll pretend I watched them if anyone asks. Honest! You go collect some cash from the advertising companies for "showing" me the ads, wink wink. (If they don't pay, sue them -- you're pretty practiced at suing your customers/clients now!). With the extra cash, you can even keep on pretending to pay your artists something, just like you pretend to do now!
No, no, it's not racketeering, it's a business plan! Besides, when did YOU start drawing such peksy distinctions? Sheesh.
Isn't this called "radio"?
The Big News Page
Next Headline: RIAA Sues Universal
Can't you just see it? With record labels giving away music, they're taking away market share for RIAA's lawyers. They gotta sue someone or risk losing their jobs, so who else to go after but the record labels?
-David
All DRM is easily cracked unless the keys are burned into hardware. The point is to make it complex enough that most people won't bother. Given that this is for online listening only, they'll probably just use a flash-based player. That way it works for "everyone", and most people won't know or care where it is downloading the actual files from. If they really want to get fancy, they could implement some sort of authentication to prevent programs other than the flash player to connect to the file server. The flash player could have it's keys changed as often as they like. Writing a program that scrapes the key from the player and uses it to download the files, would violate the DMCA, and could be prosecuted. The number of connections from a single IP could be limited or logged to find people that were bypassing the flash player and going straight to the files.
At that point it would be easier and safer to use a filesharing program or burn a friend's CD.
Audacity is very cool app. The editing interface is very easy to work with and highly intuitive, you can change pitch and speed of a recording, and you can even add cool audio effects, with the ability to add your own. And it's cross-platform, with ports for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. And, of course it's open source.
I originally installed it in order to convert/edit some tape recordings I had and 'master' them to CD-Rs, and then I just started playing with it, mixing up some tracks and stuff. All in all, a very powerful tool for audio editing!
My blog
I'm one of them as well. But can I add to that? I don't mind seeing ads relevant to me, but I also don't want to see the same two ads over and over and over...
I can barely stand to watch anything on Comedy Central's MotherLoad anymore. Because, oh dear sweet baby Jesus, if I have to watch that Yaris break a piggy bank ONE MORE TIME, I swear...
I don't necessarily mind having to ignore some ads (otherwise, how could I browse the web?) but inability to download to my iPod would be a showstopper for me. That's how I listen to almost all my music these days, whether on the car stereo, home stereo, or out walking with earbuds.
Sorry, them's the breaks, the record companies lost the instant they started producing digital information. Forget "should" and right or wrong, it's pure economics. It's like complaining about gravity or the speed of light.
Digital information is trivially copyable, that's a simple statement of fact. All it takes is a single copy to be distributed exponentially. The cost or value of the bit of digital information essentially works out at zero. Copyrights, laws, even digital rights management systems don't change that economic fact of life. You can complain, threaten, sue, encrypt, legislate, tear at your hair as much as you like but you absolutely will lose to that economic reality.
Deleted
Note the title of my comment. Do you honestly think I am referring to the AAC standard and not Fairplay?
Jesus christ get a clue.
I guess they could just use non-DRM AAC for the DRM.
Oh wait.
It was pretty obvious that he was talking about DRMed AAC files. If you are going to be pendantic about the name you might as well yell at him for using the term WMA when he meant Janus DRM.
Why would anyone choose to listen to artists from one specific label when there are free services like Pandora, Last.FM, SomaFM, etc... that have diverse playlists from the whole universe of artists and music genres? How long would you listen to a terrestrial station if that was the case? This is just another example of how incredibly inept the music labels are.
In my opinion, the article's concept is likely to have a good impact, but on many levels. I think it is important to see that if this isn't directly successful, it may be the precursor to something much more successful.
First, free music is pretty cool, especially if it is from known artists (although I have amassed TENS of fans from many countries and sold TENS of CDs and a hundred or so downloads from iTunes et. al internationally while giving away more than half my catalog on price-optional sites like iSound.com, pureVolume.com, and audiri.com). Free music as incentive for something else is a model that is evolving pretty hard right now, but I bet it will stick around for a long time.
There are lots of examples where successes have occurred with ad-driven services: broadcast TV; "free", ad-driven internet provider services, tons of "free" web sites and site hosting, etc. I don't know that the average John and Jane Q. Publique will mind the ads in this case... time will tell.
A Big Record Company is trying something fairly broad with "free" music. This is a positive step - trying to redefine oneself in business is akin to survival. I think it was W.E. Deming who said, "It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." So, perhaps this record label is trying to change for its betterment.
A Passionate Independent Musician
If Apple did this, Steve Jobs would announce that its available today. Who out there actually believes this will ever materialize?
Most of us listen to the radio at least sometimes, and ads have always been a natural part of that. I use Pandora, which I see as basically analogous to a radio station, but with more ability to customize, plus all the ads being visual, so no commercial interruptions to the audio (so far).
Am I that odd for not finding the mere presence of ads all that objectionable? Sure, I'll bail on a service or site if the advertising it carries is intrusive, distracting or uses aggressive & coercive methods to gain my attention, but its presence alone just doesn't set me off that much.
On the other hand, while it represents an important step towards old media adopting fresher business models, the fact remains that the service discussed in TFA is offered by Universal, who was an RIAA label last time I checked. If using the service means generating ad revenue for an RIAA member organization directly, then I cannot in good conscience use the service. The RIAA uses its financial resources to harm US citizens and the US Constitution, after all.
Someone upstream mentioned the Urge service, and its interface looks a lot like Rhapsody's, which felt kind of stiff to me. Besides that, it appears to use DRM. So far, if I want portable music with maximal interoperability, I'll have to continue my "old fashioned" manaul method of ripping CDs to 320kbps MP3s. If the CD is from an RIAA member label, then I'll buy it used. Utopia would be if MP3Tunes.com got their indie artists into heavy rotation on Pandora & I could get Pandora's interface to asterisk those songs when playing. Pandora is my equivalent to radio these days, and I would be *so* much more likely to buy an album if I had a quick visual cue telling me it was an RIAA-free product.
Pi Ran Out
Free as in speech, Free as in beer and Free as in targeted advertising
I guess someone needs to point out to Mr. Kent that filesharing is legal in Canada.
I don't care why you're posting AC
This is the same business model as the radio, but there are two fundamental differences:
The idea is ancient, and while it's a great move for the online music industry, it's going to fall very short of consumers' expectations. It's also going to die quickly as soon as it becomes trivial (like it isn't already?) to copy the music to new files complete with meta information.
I'd sell my stock now and invest in a truly innovative and consumer empowering idea. The rulebook is getting way too long. The record industry execs need to put their collective MBA's together and do something useful.
Hilarious. A record company finally offers free downloads, and what responses do we see on /.?
"Horrors! I won't sit thru ADS to get free music!"
"It's encumbered with DRM! Help, I'm being repressed!"
"Bah -- the artist selection sucks!"
Ever heard the saying, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"?
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.
Funny createSig(Witty remark, Odd reference)
{
return (Funny)remark + (Funny)reference;
}
Someone's offering me free music! It must be an evil plot by Big Brother to take my rights away!
And how is this any different from what Napster is doing currently?
I am suprised the Universal Artist aren't pitching a fit over this. Does Universal really think that they will bring in that much revenue of the ads? What benefits will the artists recieve for this new free music website? I am sure that the consumers at Spiralfrog will figure out a way to burn the music on to their portable players and cd's with a some recording software.
90% of everything is crap
they aren't allowed to sell the drug until FDA approval. So 7 years selling is all they get. There is no approval process for songs (though it may be a good idea if there were...).
But if I can't put it on a CD to play in my car, or in my music player to play on the train it is pretty much useless to me as I don't listen to much music at other times. (Well, there's work, but I doubt I'd be able to reach this site through work's firewall)
BBC Radio4 article just finished (they're normally a good source)
they mentioned:
1) it will not support ipod (they implied all other mp3 devices were supported)
2) an executive said that though you will have to watch ads as you download music videos, you won't have any ads when you burn those videos into your video playlist.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Excuse if this is a repeat, but is there any link with http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5294750.stm?
You have decided to adapt to a revolution, a big change that is propelled not by limited sources, but THE PEOPLE.
It is much to your advantage in so that you will ride with the wave instead of going against it.
Youll probably make a shitload of easy cash as well, all the solid media production and distribution costs are now null.
Read radical news here
For years people like me and countless other Slashdotters have been telling the labels to detach themselves from a dead business model. Maybe this plan will work for Universal and maybe it won't. I'm not interested in listening to SpiralFrog, but then again, I gave up on commercial radio years ago. There may be all kinds of people out there who will find SpiralFrog quite tasty.
At least they're trying something new, something that fits more closely with 2006 than 1956.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I can already listen to internet radio for free. I just can't do anything with the music.
I've already got SOMA FM. I don't need Universal's channel.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Universal is an RIAA member, and they are distributing music which they own the rights to.
Playing a song on the radio is considered a public performance, and the composer gets a royalty for that usually collected by ASCAP or BMI, but I don't think the performer gets a royalty.
User listens to music for free, but there are ads. Where have I heard of this before? Lots of Internet radio around, like Pandora, that nominally doesn't allow the music to be captured, played on a portable device, etc., except if you find where the files are cached, and rename them to SomethingUseful.mp3.
Really nothing to see here, except for the fact that Universal now realizes that music being heard leads to music being bought.
My knee-jerk reaction was "Of course not", but this actually makes sense. At least now the "I only pirate to decide whether to buy it" crowd has no excuse any more.
How many knees do you have?
Yes, an advertisement revenue model makes sense. It's what's powered the US free press since before 1776, it powered radio and TV though they were government franchises, and it is now powering most of the free internet. It's a model that works.
The rest of your comment makes no sense at all. Newspapers, radio and TV never came with the kind of restrictions this music is likely to come with. In order to enjoy this music you will have to give up control of your computer, which also stores your private documents and acts as your press. DRM is a bad deal and companies that offer music without DRM are going to win this game. Worse, no immunity at all will be given to people who use the service, any more than temporary M$ give aways make a business less prone to a BSA raid. Innocent people are being extorted for sharing now, you know dead people, people who don't know how to use a computer, etc. Use of this service will only put the wrong kind of music and software on your computer. In all, it will make you more liable to that kind of legal abuse.
It's too little too late. If they would actually present the world with something more like their old radio model, they would be making a much better start. The time for that was ten years ago. Instead, they have wasted their money on useless DRM schemes and sued their fans. They can rot with their 60 year old music. I'm not having any of it until it's really free and I can use it to amuse my friends without getting sued.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
Audacity lets you record a stream and redirect it to a .wav or .mp3 (with free plugin).
Sigue Sigue Sputnik did sell ads on their first album Flaunt It http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaunt_It_(album). Each track ends with an advertisement, mixing real paying customers with Sputnik's self-promotion. It's pretty funny.
Huh, this really put the DRM issue in perspective for me, because this offer is simply not appealing to me. Even when the price is FREE, if I can't play the music where and when and how I want, I'm simply not interested any longer. I'd rather just listen to what I already have.
What they are really saying is that they will let you try listening to their music without paying for it first. If you want to do anything with it, you have to pay. Which isn't a bad idea, acutally...
I've been doing that via Naxos (and Warp Records, for that matter) for months (and I'm sure others have been for years). You can try the music before you buy it, only it's bad quality and you can't download it, or you can buy a good old-fashioned CD and do what you want with it.
In analog radio and FCC-licensed digital radio, neither the record label nor the recording artist sees a cent when a recording of a song is performed. The songwriter, the songwriter's music publisher, and the publisher's performance rights organization (BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC) split the performance royalties.
Nothing ever has been truely free, if you aren't buying (or stealing) something someone else is paying to put it in your hands for [their] own reasons.
What about Project Gutenberg, archive.org or the GNU project? Don't underestimate the wealth of art which has an expired copyright, or which is by believers in freedom.
Unless you get "Shoot the duck and win a free iPod" when searching for things like iPod, iTunes, and other keywords relating to digital music. Would that still be targeted?
Up until now the industry has been trying to crowbar internet distribution to fit their old business model (price per recording, no adverts, as used with CDs), and it failed.
Now they are trying to crowbar internet distribution to fit another old business model (free of charge, adverts included, as used on radio) and it will fail.
How long before they realise what it is they need to do? (free of charge, freely copyable, no unauthorised commercial use)
Once they do this good music will spread like wildfire and will form free advertising for good bands who will then make lots of money from concerts and other live performances without having to have spent an enormous amount on marketing etc.
I actually think the industry already know this, but are trying to avoid it because as soon as everyone realises that this is the future the bands will realise that they really don't need the industry.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
No, but the immunity from litigation is enough to make up for havign targeted advertising on each page, and I am not a total fucking moron so I can find a way to record the audio stream without loss of quality beyond the decoding step, and write it to a CD.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You should also link this. And say something about people who use too many Os in "lose".
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalrous
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
One word: no.
Freedom to copy and burn is nonnegotiable. Which is why I use eMusic. Any other service will have to give me the same level of freedom before I'll even consider it.
We only want a quiet place to finish working while God eats our brains.
--Bruce Sterling
One: the Federal Communications Commission. In many markets, FCC has allowed its two largest subcontractors, Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting, to divide up the terrestrial FM band between them. Stations controlled by these two companies have tended to eliminate local bands from their playlists, leaving us with the monopoly of RIAA music.
Like writing songs in the first place? Do you want to be the next George Harrison?
As of the release of Windows Millennium Edition, the Windows Media system supports the "secure audio path", which a WMA file can require for playback. Audio output drivers signed by Microsoft WHQL must support a function that turns off cleartext digital outputs such as the What-U-Hear output available on some sound cards. Audio output drivers not signed by Microsoft WHQL, and audio output drivers running on Windows 2000 or earlier operating systems, cannot play "secure audio path" files.
AAC itself is digital rights management, where "rights" refers to the exclusive rights granted under patent law to the assignees of the inventors of AAC.
"I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch" -- LFO, "Summer Girls"
Of this Im sure.
this is either a very good troll or a complete idiot.
The list is of 'Universal Records' artists, that is only one label among the many many that are part of Vivendi Universal Group, the biggest record company in the world.
This list gives only some of the labels which make up Universal, I believe only the American part.
Mercury, Polydor, A&M, Def Jam, Interscope... Many of the biggest artists in the world are included.
This troll has launched a lengthy and utterly pointless debate about the worth of the Universal Records artists.. Please mod down.
This is a big deal. It's a massive, massive victory for those fighting the current distribution model.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Universal_Mu sic_Group_artists
links to lists for each label of artists whose record company is part of the Universal Group
my password really is 'stinkypants'
At the beginning of the 20th century it was thought that recording technology would destroy the music industry. Why the hell would someone go pay to see a concert when they could listen to the music as much as they want at home?
Everyone who thinks "omg how will people get paid!?!?!" write this down: disruptive technologies require that businesses rethink their strategy. If someone figured out how to make cars run on happy thoughts, would you go "omg how will we keep the oil companies in business?"
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
If it's a gift horse they're making gads of money off of then it's not a gift horse.
That said, I just don't buy or listen to commercial music. I don't like paying for lawsuits against single mothers and children. You could say I was just brought up wrong.
It's been a long time.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just to compare it to 'free' braodcast TV.
You watch a movie. It is 2 hours long. With ads and teasers for you to watch the next show, they drag it out to 3 hours.
The fee to content providers for a set of eyeballs watching a movie is about $0.10
So you are basically suckered into watching commerials for 1 hour for a $0.10 product.
You can get the movie from netflix for about $1.
I will not work for $1/hour, so I subscribe to netflix (and give MPAA money for attorneys unfortunately), and don't watch a single ads based show on TV.
My guess is that spiralfrog will be a similarly bad deal. The content will be in the WMA, and not MP3. Do you have to watch commercials for as long as the song plays?
"Fix it"
Huh? This is not true -- at least, it doesn't have to be true. You can use information that the user submits anyway during the course of using your service, in order to develop your database for targeting ads.
For instance, Google gives you targeted ads based on what you search for. If you search for "toothpaste," I'll bet you you're going to get toothpaste or dental-related ads. This doesn't require spyware, it just requires the site not to be stupid: it's stupid to give someone irrelevant ads when you have the capacity not to.
Obviously, spyware is evil, but it's not fair to say that all targeted advertising requires invasive client-side spyware; you can get a good degree of targeting just by using contextual and freely-available information, and stuff that people are giving you in the course of using your service anyway.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"Obviously there is an 'on-demand' aspect, but really." - Are you for real? This is the crux issue and its HUGE. Free, on-demand music does not exist ANYWHERE, period. This is not radio, this is access to every song in Universal's music library at the moment you want it. Try that with radio. For that matter, try that with internet radio. Or satilite radio. You wont find it. In todays music market, music is distributed in one of two ways - free with no user control or pay-for-use, on demand. This offering combines the free nature of radio with the on-demand element of download and subscription offerings. This is new, its innovative, and its definitly not radio.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
1- Missing url for SpiralFrog
2- Music files WILL be playable on a portable player.
Support the FairTax
Same thing for Microsoft search. Point is, I'm looking for ads.
Great comments, to view a corporate profile on SpiralFrog please visit: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/google -announces-desktop-gadget-winners/