By Andy Goldberg Sep 18, 2007, 10:07 GMT
San Francisco - In the annals of online music, there have been hundreds of so-called iPod killers that have tried to challenge Apple's shiny music players and the company's equally dominant iTunes music store.
Unfortunately, almost all of them died a quick death before they even put a scratch on their targets.
But that hasn't stopped others trying. The latest hopeful goes by the name of SpiralFrog and aims to unseat Apple by offering free legal downloads of millions of tracks.
Music lovers have already been able to get free music online since the days of Napster. But such peer to peer sites are usually deemed in violation of copyright and can expose users to viruses and malware, not to mention recordings of patchy quality.
But SpiralFrog comes with the backing of dozens of music companies, including Universal Music which controls roughly 25 per cent of the world music market - though in these years of declining CD revenues that means a lot less than it used to.
The site currently offers more than 750,000 songs for free, including popular tracks from Universal Music Group artists like U2, Timbaland, Amy Winehouse and other artists. In fact, according to Billboard magazine SpiralFrog currently offers free downloads of eight of the top 10 songs on the US pop charts.
So what's not to like? SpiralFrog tracks cannot be downloaded to iPods - by far the most popular of all portable media players - though downloads are permitted to Windows-compatible devices.
Also, users have to renew their free subscriptions every month to retain access to the SpiralFrog library, at which time they will also be required to fill out a survey on their music and buying habits. They will have to wait 90 seconds for every download, during which time they will hopefully look at ads.
The challenges facing SpiralFrog led many to doubt that it would ever get off the ground, especially after it ran through its 10 million dollars of start-up funding and experienced a series of management shake-ups.
But in a music world where sales have been decimated by illegal download services like Limewire and Bit Torrent, other music companies may be forced to accept advertising as their best method of monetizing their artists, experts say.
'The CD business as we know it has a limited lifespan,' said Joe Mohen, chairman of SpiralFrog.
'If a consumer isn't willing to pay for it, the only option is advertising,' said Allan Klepfisz, chief executive of QTrax, a SpiralFrog competitor set to launch later this year.
SpiralFrog launches with ad deals from big-name marketers like Chevrolet, Colgate, Burger King and the US Army. The revenue from advertisers will be split, with the labels and music publishers getting more than half of the total that SpiralFrog receives.
'It's great that the industry is experimenting and still trying to figure things out,' digital media analyst David Card of Jupiter Research said. 'I do think someone is going to figure out how to do ad-supported music on the Internet.'
'At some point, it could be the primary distribution system for music where the record industry actually gets paid,' said Scott Stagg, a Connecticut hedge fund manager who invested in SpiralFrog. 'This is a very viable alternative to selling music because clearly that mode is broken. This is very similar to TV: You get it for free and the advertisers pay the money.'
But the site's potential users were a little more circumspect. Max T, a San Francisco college student who currently downloads all his music for free and plays it on his iPod, said he definitely would not use the site since it was incompatible with his music player.
'At the same time I feel bad about what is basically stealing music,' said Max, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of being targeted by music industry lawsuits. 'So if there was a way to get it for free by watching ads, and be able to play it on my iPod, well sign me up.'
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