www.spiralfrog.com From Engadget.com SpiralFrog, the badly named, ad-supported music and video download portal has gone live today after months of beta testing, or so we're told. The site allows users to legally and freely download media from a catalogue of over 800,000 songs and 3,500 videos (most provided by Apple ship-jumper Universal Music Group, as mentioned way back in August 2006), and requires only that users register on the site and log in once a month (otherwise the DRM'd files go belly up). It's not all lollipops and rainbows, however, as just mentioned, the files are full of nasty, fun-murdering DRM which prevents your new tunes from being burned onto a CD. In other gloomy news, SpiralFrog's content won't work on your Mac or your iPod, and can only be placed on two media players or phones at a time. "We believe it will be a very powerful alternative to the pirate sites," said company chairman Joe Mohen, adding, "With SpiralFrog you know what you're getting." Yes Joe, and we know what we're not getting, too
I just can't see how this is going to be successful considering their DRM is worse than most. You can't download anything to iPods (Zune users rejoice!) and you can't burn songs to CD's. Oh, and it isn't compatible with Apple. The latter is just for me and other Mac users, but considering you can't burn a CD and can't use an iPod, that is an incredibly limited audience. Note that only Vivendi has climbed on board. All the other labels are waiting to see if they generate enough ad revenue to keep the thing afloat. I bet the don't.
Yeah, significant DRM. No iPod. No CD burning. Only 2 computers OR 2 portable MP3 players. You have to login AT LEAST once each month or your songs automatically stop working.
