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

Not being able to copy the music?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when they realize we are able to copy the music, what happens?

Not Bad, but not a Music source

[Daniel_Staal]

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...

Ads

[johnlittledotorg]

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.

"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:"The big companies"?

[russ1337]

download songs for free and instead rely on advertising for its revenues.

What the article fails to mention is the adverising is the artists singing about a vendors product.....

I cant wait for Elton Johns new single : "Lucy in the sky with diamonds from Jarad"........

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

[UbuntuDupe]

I'd like to violate every agreement I make for short-term benefit too, but I don't justify such desires on grounds of "freedom".

They produce the music so they can make a profit. I'm sure it would be great if everyone worked for free, but they don't.

The produce it knowing that they can sell it with certain conditions attached. Then they sell it with those conditions attached. Then people start to claim their "freedom" is being violated, and that they have the right to unilaterally violate those conditions.

Sure, music companies "should" just "trust" people not to give it away to everyone, really, they can't.

So what should they do? Just not make music for profit? Or, you accept that the artist "deserves" a cut proportional to listeners, but that the "record companies" take "too much". Do you know how difficult, and what a crapshoot it is, to promote an artist?

I'm not trying to troll. What should an artist and record company do?