Universal Offers iPod-Resistant Music 323
dprovine writes "Universal is now offering music through Spiral Frog as free downloads supported by advertising revenue. But according to Daily Tech, the files being offered won't work on iPods. 'The move to not allow its content to be played on iPod's appears to be a clear snub by the Universal Music Group, similar to NBC's recent move of its television content from iTunes to Amazon.com. Apple has not commented on this development. For many, though, SpiralFrog.com presents an intriguing new business model that may present a legal alternative to file sharing or spending large amounts of money on CDs or paid download services, such as iTunes.'"
24 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
come on. let's get real here.
universal is gonna get owned.
How can it not work? (Score:5, Insightful)
How can it not work on an iPod?
MP3 is a clearly defined standard. These files either are, or they aren't, mp3's. If they are, iPods will play them. If they aren't, then they shouldn't be sold as MP3's.
Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
Like selling screen doors to submarines.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The stupid part of this idea is removing 70-80% (the share of iPods in the portable music market) of the market for your product. Just try to buy a gas station and switch to only selling ethanol and see how well that works if you need an example. The phrase shooting one's self in the foot comes to mind, but the recording studios seem good at that.
$20 says they show up on iPods in less than a week (Score:2, Insightful)
And again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it won't work on iPods, they're using DRM-out-the-ass WMA files that won't work on any OS but windows and players made by companies that bought into the Plays for Sure nonsense that not even Microsoft themselves use.
So it's free, so what. You get a combination of advertising and no control. I'll stick to my usual of buying CDs and ripping them to AAC, even if it means less music overall.
The whole thing smells of an exclusivity contract (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, there's probably a similar thing going on here... they're either working a deal or have a deal with another provider to try to exclude Apple's products. Aside from conversion to one format then to MP3, it won't be more than a day or two before someone has a standalone program or plug-in for an existing one that will do the conversion.
Re:Uh.... what's the big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's an even easier way, download it from a P2P network in the first place.
The RIAA still doesn't get it. People can already get this stuff for free. The question in the consumer's mind is would they rather make sure it is 100% legal, or would they rather the music was convenient, i.e. works everywhere on all devices and can be transferred between machines and will still work if you switch computers or reinstall your computer. WMA is too painful to use. Nice try though.
Re:How can it not work? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Pay Services are Effectively Cheaper than this (Score:2, Insightful)
Or, I can pay $15 a month for Rhapsody or Napster and not have to spend my time being subjected to advertisements. $15 a month, which, and let's be honest, is not a lot of money to have access to a library of millions of songs.
My cynical take: this service is essentially an advertising gimmick by its financiers to draw people to superior services, such as Rhapsody. The increment from $0/month to $15/month is not too much at all for the tremendous jump in convenience.
Re:How can it not work? (Score:4, Insightful)
(just kidding, but wouldn't it be nice?)
Re:How can it not work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Result: SpiralFrog will still fail despite being free.
Clearly, snubbing Apple is more important than financial success.
Fixing the wrong problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt this service will last since the majority of customers are going to be too busy downloading music to spend time clicking ads.
Ads work well when people viewing those pages are interested in the topic, and might want more information, or details on how to buy the items, (or similar items), discussed on the page. With this scheme, they are interested in downloading music, which they are already doing. So how are the ads going to appeal to them? Especially considering that they are interested in free music.
Apple Offers Zune-Resistant Music (Score:3, Insightful)
- Stealth dave
Free Music with advertising? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now everyone will talk about how great free music is, but then they'll complain about having to listen to advertisements. This, of course, will lead people to pine for some service where you could pay to listen to radio without advertisements.
Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't like it, so what? You aren't in their target market.
You see, you are presuming that everyone want to take the limited music with them and/or that one cares whether the music works after 30 days. I don't. Let me explain why:
I'm not interested in renting music I already know about. I want to rent music I don't know about, so I can decide if I want to buy it.
While the cost aspects (due to the ads) aren't a perfect analogy, think of this like test driving a car. I want to drive the car for a short period of time on reasonable terms, not only experience it under 25 MPH in some dealer lot. DRM gives me the ability to legally 'test drive' the music. I want to sample music - meaning the whole song (or close to it), not some maybe-but-perhaps-not-really-representative 30 second sound-byte that Apple provides. I already use AmieStreet.com (since the samples are much longer), and I'm open to other alternatives (yes, I know about Napster and Rhapsody, and no, I'm not shelling out $10 a month)
Once I sample a song and decide I like it, I will go acquire the music elsewhere - either on a physical CD (if I like enough songs on an album) or though another source (iTunes, etc.). That will not possess DRM, since I have never paid for (and don't intend to pay for) DRMed music. [That's like buying the car you test drove, for those following the analogy]
The purchased song will get placed on my iPod so that I can take it with me. I'm happy, I'm only transporting music I like, and their business model works in the process, because I can use them to explore. So I'm sorry, but I'm failing to see why their model isn't a good one.
Re:Apple Offers Zune-Resistant Music (Score:2, Insightful)
That is quite a bit less restrictive than this new service.
Great for all 10 Zune users! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see how great this thing really is in 6-12 months with ads, DRM and limiting the product to not work on the #1 portable players.
I predict yet another failure in the pipeline. This product is about catering to the recording industry with the customer as an afterthought.
Same story, different URL.
Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not MP3 - WMA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How can it not work? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:not MP3 - WMA (Score:5, Insightful)
I once dated a guy who worked for Universal in their licensing department. I guarantee you Universal doesn't understand that the average consumer has no idea what label an artist is on. When you work for a company like Universal you hear these entertainment names constantly, and it gets hard to separate that constant work related input from what you know about an entertainer from the non-work world.
In the end Universal is crippling itself. This isn't new for Universal. They were one of the last studios to begin moving their film archive onto DVD, they also just released DVD's with out even so much as a menu (ie, zero special features) you put the disk in, watched a couple previews you didn't want to watch, and then the movie started.
Universal is a company that has consistently put out the absolute minimum in frills, done the least possible it could in order to sell the item, all the while charging a premium for the DVD. This goes for Movies, and now more recently for Music. In the end they want to charge the CD price premium without providing the CD level quality. Apple won't let them screw their customers like that and so Universal is cutting off it's own nose to spite it's own face.
In the end we can live without the labels, and unfortunately Universal hasn't learned that fact yet. There'll always be great music out there, with or without them.
According to this article [pcadvisor.co.uk] iTunes now is the third largest music retailer with 10% of the market (Wal-mart at #1 has 15% of the market.) Considering that Apple has nearly 90% of the digital music players market, Universal's attempt to move it's catalog onto Amazon (which is ranked #4 in the US for music retail) may have been an ill thought out strategic move when matched with the fact that the files only coming in (non-iPod supported) WMA format. In this case it appears that Universal has overestimated audience demand for their music library. Screwing yourself out of 10% total music sales in the US could easily result in Universal not seeing another artist enter the top 10 sales lists until the iTunes boycott ends. Most of todays generic corporate created artists lack any sort of long term market draw or memorability without the corporate backed marketing and chart positions generated by sales. That is the significance of Universal's ill thought out strategy to force Apple's hand.
I could also go off onto a tangent regarding Malcolm McDowell's Tipping Point and how the "cool kids" likely to cause a tipping point effect for an artist are probably the "cool kids" who of course own iPods. An artist without the "cool kids" support is going to find him/herself increasingly less relevant to mainstream consumers. This of course is a harder idea to support with actual numbers, for me it's just a gut feeling that this decision is going to have that sort of anti-cool impact that could result in the wrong kind of "tipping point" (ie, people abandoning an artist.)
Re:Like selling screen doors to submarines.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Turnabout is fair play (Score:1, Insightful)
If it seems unfair, perhaps there should be an equal amount of outrage directed toward Apple... right?
Re:Like selling screen doors to submarines.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem for Universal is that they can't sell DRM'd music for the iPod even if they wanted to, as Apple won't license Fairplay to anyone. Their only options were to sell DRM-free music, or go with WMA. It would seem that they went with the DRM route, we'll just have to see if it works out for them.