Universal to Offer Music for Free 356
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?"
Enough ads! (Score:3, Interesting)
DRM encumbered? (Score:2, Interesting)
TFA doesn't say anything about whether or not the music in question is DRM-encumbered. I see no reason at all to believe that it won't be.
So while the music may be free as in beer, it'll likely only be free in the most limited sense of the word.
Thanks, but I'll pass.
finally. (Score:5, Interesting)
I will probably go watch some ands and not hear the music (as it will probably require windows) just to show support for a company that is taking some initiative. I hope it makes them billions of dollars and all the other companies sit and wonder why they didn't think of it.
Re:Good News ... but .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the story [com.com].
Woncer what DRM they will use... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:"The big companies"? (Score:4, Interesting)
But then I guess that's a win-win situation. People can now, finally, get something for nothing AND stick it to the music companies by not having to see/watch ads to get the product.
The only question is, and the article is short on this matter, will people be able to take the song and put it in any format they want for THEIR use?
This article [redherring.com] does say that DRM will be incorporated into the songs to try and prevent sharing of the music but that still doesn't answer the question. The article also talks about how the ads might be inserted but nothing definite.
It's much older than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
For those unfamiliar with Terrestrial Radio, it's that thing with all the monopolies that is being pummeled by the more interesting stuff on Internet Radio and Satellite Radio.
Re:Enough ads! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Artists rejoice! (Score:3, Interesting)
A good experiment - some will like it (Score:3, Interesting)
First, free music is pretty cool, especially if it is from known artists (although I have amassed TENS of fans from many countries and sold TENS of CDs and a hundred or so downloads from iTunes et. al internationally while giving away more than half my catalog on price-optional sites like iSound.com [isound.com], pureVolume.com [purevolume.com], and audiri.com [audiri.com]). Free music as incentive for something else is a model that is evolving pretty hard right now, but I bet it will stick around for a long time.
There are lots of examples where successes have occurred with ad-driven services: broadcast TV; "free", ad-driven internet provider services, tons of "free" web sites and site hosting, etc. I don't know that the average John and Jane Q. Publique will mind the ads in this case... time will tell.
A Big Record Company is trying something fairly broad with "free" music. This is a positive step - trying to redefine oneself in business is akin to survival. I think it was W.E. Deming [wikipedia.org] who said, "It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." So, perhaps this record label is trying to change for its betterment.
Re:For me, cost isn't the issue. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is what they should do
1) make all art copyrights last 7 years.
2) release all music
The drug companies dont seem to have a problem making billions of dollars on 7 year expiring patents.
This is a short term solution. Ideally, we would live in a world where we dont need to preserve artificial scarcity but we will probably have to wait for nano forges for that. Humans expressing themselves through art will not end because no one pays for it. Not to claim art, but these comments here are proof of that. No one is paying me to write on this fourm and yet I do it anyways. An artist needs to create as a slashdot poster needs to comment.
Congratulations. Universal Invents Radio (Score:3, Interesting)
Really nothing to see here, except for the fact that Universal now realizes that music being heard leads to music being bought.
Re:It isn't a matter of "should" (Score:3, Interesting)
"The incremental damage done to a record company (since that's the focus of the article) is quite correctly thought of as insignificant by the individual performing the copying."
What do you mean by "quite correctly" ? The only head of a record company I've known ran an indie label with ten employees. At around the start of the P2P explosion he was paying himself about $25K a year. When people started sharing his music in lieu of buying, he had to lay off of his friends.
Naturally, that was his problem to deal with, and not anybody else's, and it was his sole responsibility to deal with the "people want something for nothing" maxim combined with the explosion of P2P. But nonetheless, he indeed had to cut costs and fire some of his friends. This was not insignificant to him, nor his friends whom he had to lay off. The fact that more people got to listen to his music was not enough.
Pirate or don't pirate -- I don't care what people do. But we should not make the mistake of assuming that the economic impact is "insignificant" if we opt to P2P in lieu of buying.
At any rate, I have another question for you. If piracy is economically insignificant to record companies, then why are they doomed to go out of business?
Re:Not Bad, but not a Music source (Score:3, Interesting)
My recent music purchases (30+ CDs, 5 music DVDs and several t-shirts) have been entirely due to bands I've discovered by trying the albums via BT or sample tracks on their websites. (My brother has bought hundreds of CDs the same way; I'm more picky about my music.)
The sample excerpts on Amazon etc. don't cut it - many bands who sounded interesting from samples turned out to be like most Hollywood movies: the trailer was the only good bit. I watch movies and listen to albums, not snippets.
Other bands like The Gathering [gathering.nl] were an absolute revelation - they alone account for a full third of those recent music purchases. If the music is good, people will buy it - even if it means international postage and currency surcharges. Now if only I can convince them to tour here...
Universal's move is a step in the right direction, but I'd like to see music companies release entire albums to try-before-you-buy. They could make them, say, 64-96kbit MP3s - good enough for a fair representation, but with the incentive to buy the full-quality CD. The bandwagon is already rolling, the only question is whether the record companies want to jump onboard or get churned under the wheels.