SpiralFrog has gained a great deal of media coverage today, even getting a mention on the 60-second news round-ups on BBC Radio 2 here in the UK. If nothing else, that tells you that today was something of a slow news day.
Among the many angles the non-tech media were taking was that this new launch was going to be a threat to the future of Apple’s iTunes. After looking at what’s promised to be on offer to far, I doubt it.
Dribs and drabs of information about the service have emerged in different news articles during the day. The first thing I heard was that it would offer “free” music funded by advertising, and immediately I was suspicious - just how, exactly, would this advertising manifest itself?
Banners on a web page? Nah - too easy to block, too easy to minimise the web page. Proprietary software needed to download or play this stuff? Something that cannot be minimised and displays ads while the songs are downloading or playing? Sounds awful, and would never be popular. Can’t be that. Audio ads appended to the beginnning or end of each song? No, surely not. That would just be a crazy idea.
Then I heard, from C|Net, that the service includes a hidden catch: “Users are required to go to the company’s Web site each month to validate their music, or else it expires.”
Wha? People who download from iTunes might well have to put up with proprietary technologies and DRM, but they own each song. They can keep it and listen to it, with a few limitations, forever. Subscription services that attempt to lock people in forever by asking them to “validate” songs they have already downloaded are simply not going to work, in my view. People don’t want that kind of hassle, they just want to download and listen and forget about maintenance. No-one wants to have to remember to maintain a music collection.
If SpiralFrog had been announced on a busier day for news, I doubt it would have made quite such an impression on the newsfeeds. As it stands and as reported, the offer sounds to me less than compelling and one that only makes listening to music more complicated. I think people are more inclined to go for the simpler option.
Me? I still buy CDs, and I plan to continue doing so for as long as I can.
CDs? You and me both. 700 (originals!) and counting...
The name SpiralFrog is sooo Web 1.0. They should've named it something like Ahoolacow or Meeslambo.
I've been buying from iTunes for three or four years now (longer then I've had an iPod). I am a huge sucker for convinience (and price, CD's are too expensive these days). Although I admit I am eager to raid the occasional bargain CD bin still.
I'm with you Giles. CDs are definately better. I agreed with the Dylan comments (the one's before he did his amazing 180° turn). 128k AAC/MP3 is atrocious to listen to on decent equipement and no I'm not even talking about £10K stuff, just your average Arcam kit for example.
I think a lot of people will invest in trying to crack the Spiralfrog DRM too, download it free, crack it and bingo.
Giles - I'm with you all the way. Let's also remember that there are only so many advertising dollars to play with, and look what happened to television as the number of channels increased. It seems that every single Web 2.0 venture is focusing on 'free to users, paid for by advertising' as the business model, and something tells me that can only end in tears - or at least a few major success stories.
I think some consumers will be perfectly happy with that model - teenagers with small and changing music libraries (the ringtone crowd) but historically the market has shown that people prefer to own over rent (even free rentals like public libraries have declined in the face of big book chains and Amazon) - VHS and DVD sales have always been a surprise - people will buy stuff that has already been on TV that they could have recorded. (Which should be a lesson to the music business).
However - I have recently found that the prices on emusic are compelling enough to actually put me off buying CDs (or rather, saving my CD money for artists not on emusic). I really hope that emusic's business continues to prosper as it demonstrates there is a viable market in selling unprotected MP3s by making it as trivial to use as iTunes + adding value in terms of expert critics and what seems to me a far better playlist / recommendation system (although that may be just the nature of current users)
Definitely. There's no way I'll even begin to consider moving away from CDs until I can download MP3s or AACs legally without DRM.
How about writing software to automate the procedure of logging in and validating?
Think of it as another developer opportunity to create a value-added software product.