Vanguard

Issue date: 10/1/07 Section: Lifestyles

Spiral Frog, Inc, http://www.spiralfrog.com, is a new media sharing company that allows users to legally download music and videos for free. Spiral Frog sells advertisement space on its Web site in order to pay the record labels for the rights to their music.

"Music fans demand fast access to high quality audio and video files and they want their music free, but they'd still like the music owners to be paid for their work and creativity," said Spiral Frog's chairman and founder, Joe Mohen. Mohen's idea allows for fans to download music and videos at no cost, other than their time and attention, and to pay music owners by allowing them to share in ad revenue.

The Web site has a library of more than 800,000 songs and 3,500 music videos, with new media being added everyday. Music fans can also view millions of bios, reviews, discography and album art. According to Spiral Frog's CEO, Mel Schrieberg,

"Research has shown that music enthusiasts have traditionally gone to one site for discovery and another for downloading Spiral Frog will offer both."

In order to use the Web site for music downloading, fans must download a "download manager" interface. As fans browse for music to download, the download manager stays on every site, showing what music is in the fan's queue, waiting for download.

Each song must be downloaded individually, and each takes about one minute to completely download. All the music that is downloaded remains in a folder on the fan's computer and can be played with any music player software.

The advertisements are Web-based and are seen while the customer is browsing the Web site, looking for songs to download. To keep their music collection active, members must visit the site at least once a month.
Each song is protected with DRM technology, which does not allow members to burn the music to CDs. After members re-validate their membership each month, the songs downloaded are then able to be burned to CDs or be transferred to portable devices.

Many speculators thought the site would only offer songs that would put advertisements in the first few seconds of the media, but that did not happen. The only time members are worried with advertisements are when they are browsing for new music. The advertisements show up just like they do on most other sites across the Web, at the top and sides of the page. Ads may pop up before the songs are allowed to download, also.

There are some downfalls to the site. Getting the Spiral Frog software is not easy to install and run. Spiral Frog only works with the Internet Explorer and is not compatible with Windows Vista. Also, at first glance, Internet Explorer 7's security features seems like it does not allow users to log in after they have created an account. However, if members add the domain name to the list of "Local Intranet" sites in IE's security settings, the login is allowed. Another downfall is that after 30 days, the music that the member has downloaded is lost unless the member goes back to the Web site and reactivates the song.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools