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?"

Comments

"The big companies"?

[Artifice_Eternity]

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.

Re:Says Who?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Who says that users will not be able to put the music on their portable media players or burn the tracks to CD?

The submitter, wild_berry, who, surprise surprise, is yet another Slashdot submitter who fails to understand the articles cited in his own submission. Neither of the articles cited contain any mention of such a restriction.

Re:Good News ... but ....

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll wait to see if the big companies follow suit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Music_Group

"Universal Music Group (UMG), formerly MCA Music Entertainment (see Music Corporation of America), is the largest business group and family of record labels in the record industry. With a 25.5% market share, it is one of the Big Four record labels." (Emphasis mine)

Doesn't get much bigger than Number 1.

Re:Good News ... but ....

[neonprimetime]

Here is a list of the universal artists that were from the wiki article, some of them seem to be half way decent, so i'm not sure what the parent is talking about :-)

2slabz (RebelRock/Universal) 3 Doors Down (Republic/Universal) 10 Years 98 Degrees* Aaliyah (Blackground/Universal) Acroma Afroman Akon Ali & Gipp Ashley Parker Angel (Blackground/Universal) The Bangkok 5 (Execution Style/Universal) David Banner Baby AKA Birdman (Cash Money/Universal) Baby Bash Bee Gees Big Tuck Big Tymers (Cash Money/Universal) Yummy Bingham (Cash Money/Universal)* Blak Jak Bloodhound Gang (Republic/Universal) Blue October Bodyrockers Toni Braxton (Blackground/Universal) Canibus Nick Cannon Chamillionaire Mr. Cheeks Cherry Monroe Tami Chynn Corey Clark (Bungalow/Universal) Jamie Cullum Crucial Conflict Currency Fleming and John Donavon Frankenreiter Mannie Fresh (Cash Money/Universal) Warren G* Godsmack (Republic/Universal) Gotan Project Pat Green (Republic/Universal) Hedley Marques Houston HIM Infinite Mass Elton John Jack Johnson (Brushfire/Universal) JoJo (Blackground/Universal) Juvenile* Brie Larson Murphy Lee Tracey Lee Lil' Romeo Lil Wayne (Cash Money/Universal) Lindsay Lohan (Motown/Universal) Lost Boyz Lumidee Teena Marie Damian Marley Stephen Marley Remy Martin Miri Ben-Ari Monifah (Uptown/Universal) Cherry Monroe Mystic (6) Natalie Nelly Nina Sky (Next Plateau/Universal) Nitty Qualo Prince Raekwon Rakim Paulina Rubio Rasaq Raphael Saadiq Shiny Toy Guns Scissor Sisters Sheek Louch Sister Hazel* Soul For Real (Uptown/Universal) Spax St. Lunatics Sticky Fingaz Tank Terror Squad Timbaland & Magoo Ms. Toi Tum Tum KeKe Wyatt (Cash Money/Universal)

Re:Good News ... but ....

[TripMaster Monkey]

Here's a more complete list of Universal Music's artists.

Re:For me, cost isn't the issue.

[UbuntuDupe]

If anyone could freely copy/use/alter digital music then much more value would be placed on *production* and *performance* of music than on *distribution* of music, which is as it should be.

Well, that isn't quite as it should be. Distribution is much more important than you make it out to be. Your favorite artist -- how did you hear about him/her? There is TONS of crap out there. How do you find the diamonds? You do not have the time to sift through all the garbage. And I think you're wrong about production -- if you can't draw a return from copyright, you can't capture any value off the production, only the easily copiable performance.

Artists would make money from concerts and sponsorships, as well as via commissions for new works. If Britney Spears promised to release a new album free to the world as soon as her fans had placed a minimum of $15 million into escrow, millions of teenage girls would put anywhere from $0.10 to $10 into the fund, the world would get more Spears (yeehaw...) and Spears would get $15 million.

I'm familiar with that idea, but sorry, but that's extremely wishful thinking. Most of them don't have their own money. Mommy will buy them a CD, but she won't make a contribution for them to that fund. Plus, I can imagine the geek reaction: "artist extorts money to produce next CD". I would point out it only works for artists that have *already* separated themselves from the chaff, but you anticipated that:

She'd have no distribution costs (sites would gladly trade bandwidth for eyeballs, not to mention the P2P channels), so the only thing she'd have to take out is production costs, which wouldn't be *nearly* as high as now.

What? Why would this affect production costs?

And she could proceed to trot around the nation doing concerts, just like she does now, and keep more of those profits too. Artists who are not Spears, or as popular as Spears, need to get popular by being good in concert and/or good in marketing, and/or willing to sign deals with the lesser devils that would replace the greater devils of today's industry. Variety would increase, live concerts would abound... what a wonderful world it would be.

Er, no. Wishful thinking is not an argument.

Look, there's a lot of stuff about copyright I don't like either, and I'm not really as pro-IP as I might have come off. But the consequencees of removing these rights is not insigificant, and anyone wanting to remove them should be aware of the costs.

Artists rejoice!

[ndtechnologies]

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.

Re:Artists rejoice!

[ZigiSamblak]

Artists receive royalties every time their song is played on the radio.

Re:Artists rejoice!

[gstoddart]

Artists receive royalties every time their song is played on the radio.

No, the record company gets the royalties. Then they deduct the costs of marketing, distribution, and making the album. Then the artist gets paid.

A distribution model paid by advertising will not generate revenue for the artists AFAIK. But, the record companies would probably still charge the overhead involved in this. For the same reason that the record companies still charge breakage and distribution fees for tracks distributed over iTunes instead of just giving the artist more.

Creative acounting is designed to ensure the record company always gets paid. The artists, not so much.

And, there are a lot of artists who don't get much air-play in the Clear Channel universe.

Cheers

Re:Artists rejoice!

[shark72]

"No, artists are supposed to recieve a royalty every time there song is played on the radio, jukebox or DJ, but you can imagine how often the lables are forgotten to be paid for the above, and how often the artists are forgotten even when the labels are paid."

I'm guessing you're talking about Europe? Here in the USA, licenses for airplay go through a couple of artists' societies called ASCAP and BMI. They are run by and for artists and the labels see none of the airplay licensing money.

Here's how BMI pays royalties, and here's how ASCAP pays.

Bummer for your countries' artists and songwriters if performance royalties are filtered through the labels. That's the wrong way to do it. Publishing and performing rights should remain with the songwriters.

Re:Woncer what DRM they will use...

[Kesh]

AAC is Apple-only.

AAC is NOT an Apple-only format. The Fairplay DRM that Apple uses on their songs purchased through iTunes is Apple-only, but non-DRM AAC is available on any music player that wants it.

Re:Says Who?

[phritz]

The submitter is sort of right - it looks like the device you transfer it to will need explicit support for the DRM. From the New York Times:

Customers will be able to download an unlimited number of Universal songs to their computer and one other device. They will not be able to transfer those songs onto a compact disc, and they must visit the site at least once a month to maintain access to their music.

Re:What a load of crap

[rabbit994]

Satellite Radio (XM at least) music channels are broadcast without Ads over both airwaves and online.

Cool Feature

[eosp]

Audacity lets you record a stream and redirect it to a .wav or .mp3 (with free plugin).