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?"
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.
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.
When iTunes was young, some guy tried to resell a song on ebay:
Here is the story .
But then I guess that's a win-win situation. People can now, finally, get something for nothing AND stick it to the music companies by not having to see/watch ads to get the product.
The only question is, and the article is short on this matter, will people be able to take the song and put it in any format they want for THEIR use?
This article does say that DRM will be incorporated into the songs to try and prevent sharing of the music but that still doesn't answer the question. The article also talks about how the ads might be inserted but nothing definite.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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
How is this any different than the radio? That's free, has popular music and is paid for by sponsors. Of course this on-demand model works better than a request to the radio, especially since lots of stations have stopped taking them.
Nice thinking inside the box there.. /film / etc from greater than 7 years ago into public domain.
Here is what they should do
1) make all art copyrights last 7 years.
2) release all music
The drug companies dont seem to have a problem making billions of dollars on 7 year expiring patents.
This is a short term solution. Ideally, we would live in a world where we dont need to preserve artificial scarcity but we will probably have to wait for nano forges for that. Humans expressing themselves through art will not end because no one pays for it. Not to claim art, but these comments here are proof of that. No one is paying me to write on this fourm and yet I do it anyways. An artist needs to create as a slashdot poster needs to comment.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...