SpiralFrog free music gains momentum with EMI deal

Stan Beer
Thursday, 07 September 2006 05:49

Your IT - Home IT

The push for advertising supported free music downloads has gained further momentum with the announcement that UK-based recording company EMI Group has signed an agreement to provide all of its of music for free downloads to US-based music download website SpiralFrog.

The EMI announcement comes on the back of a similar deal announced just over a week ago between SpiralFrog and Universal Music. As a result, SpiralFrog can now provide US visitors free access to all of the music from two of the world's biggest publishers.

It is not yet known whether the EMI deal is also a two-year agreement as is the case with Universal. However, by December US residents will be able to download music from the likes of U2, Gwen Stefani, Sting, Pink Floyd and many more of the world's biggest selling muscial artists.

The downloads from SpiralFrog will be compatible with MP3 players that use Microsoft's current Windows Media Player digital rights management system, PlayForSure, but will not be compatible with iPod. Although Microsoft's upcoming Zune player will not use PlayForSure, it is possible that the SpiralFrog downloads will also be compatible with Zune.

One downside to the SpiralFrog service is that it will not enable users to burn downloaded tracks to CD.

However, now that two of the biggest music content stables in the world have signed up to a free download service, Apple, which dominates the download space, could find its business model of charging users US$0.99 per download under pressure.

For Apple, which makes most of its money in the music business from iPod sales driven largely by iTunes downloads, the question is likely to be whether to move from a paid downloads to an advertising supported music downloads model. Now that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board, perhaps he could provide some answers.