Wine Journal for iPhone and iPod Touch

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Free iTunes Alternative

SpiralFrog.com will be offering free music for download. This advertising-supported site will offer songs in crappy DRM'd WMA format which means 85% of music devices out there (aka iPods) won't be able to play it. You can listen to music via a special player on your computer and can only sync to 2 "PlaysForSure" devices. Plus, you have to log onto the service at least once a month to view ads otherwise your music will stop playing.

Apparently the founders of SpiralFrog have completely forgotten about the Dotcom bubble burst. FreePC anyone?

2 comments:

2poppy said...

NY Times has an article about it today: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/technology/30music.html. It really makes no sense to me either. Sure, they'll have customers (or rather suckers), but then they'll find out that they don't own the music. Renting or borrowing music has never been a model that worked - this is nothing but a glorified version of that model. I gotta think it's just a way for the most powerful record company to encourage competition for iTunes so they have more negotiating power. It's the only thing that makes sense to me.

2poppy said...

Additionally, there's a rumor that the music will expire after six months. See here: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/29/spiralfrog_uni_launc.html.