Universal Offers iPod-Resistant Music

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.'"

Re:How can it not work?

[Andy Dodd]

Clearly not MP3s. Almost surely they are DRMed WMA files.

Result: SpiralFrog will still fail despite being free.

WMA, not MP3...?

[riceboy50]

This was found in the comments of TFA, so take it with a grain of salt:

They're using Microsoft's proprietary .wma container files with streams decompressed using Microsoft proprietary WMA codecs. Even if the music is free, they're still bound to a player that supports a particular version of Microsoft's proprietary DRM.

Pathetic

[DogDude]

OK, now, I understand what the big music industry people are trying to accomplish. They're trying to keep from going the way of the buggy-whip makers. They're pulling out all the stops to keep from becoming irrelevant. That's understandable. But jeez, this is just pathetic.

They're trying anything and everything to keep people from buying their music. They're putting up every kind of conceivable roadblock that they can come up with, as malicious and as pointless as they may be. These guys are really getting desperate, and it shows. Pretty soon, even the average brain-dead consumer will understand what they're trying to do, and then it really will be all over for the entire industry.

Compare this with the EU suit

[daveywest]

NBC Uni may have just helped Apple more than hurt them. I'm sure this is going to come up in the impending anti-competitive lawsuit against iTunes that the EU is planning.

Where Apple is NOT competing

[CommandoCody]

Okay. There is a very very simple reason why FairPlay will never work with anything but iPods. iTunes exists solely to sell iPods. It makes little to no money for Apple in the first place - some have said that it operates at a small loss for Apple, after the content suppliers' cut is removed. What possible reason could Apple have for letting anyone put that music on a Zune or any other mp3 player? Is the suggestion they should do this as a public service? Should they include free ponies, too? Once again, let's review. Apple is a HARDWARE company. Its OS and content exists to sell more HARDWARE. If there is no incentive for the customer to use that hardware, Apple would be a company of fools to give away everything else.

Which begs the question...

[Rob Y.]

...how come all the iPod wannabes support WMA but not non-DRM AAC. Most iPod owners' collections consist primarily of AAC's ripped from CDs. Why on earth would the 2nd tier players not want to be able to play these, if only to lower that barrier to entry?

    Do they all think that hitching their wagons to Microsoft (and MS DRM) will magically win the day for them? Even now? I know Apple won't let them use the iPod's DRM, which I guess is pretty nasty. But that's no reason to snub Apple customers willing to switch players if not for having to re-rip their collections.

Re:Now music comes with a ball and chain! Yay!

[jellomizer]

Funny... Back in the early days of computer programmers were working very hard to try to get Files and Programs to run with each other....
Today programmers are working very hard to make sure programs don't work or share with each other.

By Excluding yourself from the iPods you are automatically killing a huge potentional customer base. By including the iPods by doing less work... You have a larger customer base and if enough people find that your product is good or better then what Apple provides in terms of Music and Price and freedom them they will switch to your service... If they switch to your service their next Digital Music Player may or may not be an iPod...

This would have been like Firefox not having a Windows version. Its sucess on the windows platform get people use to Firefox... Then if they decide to switch to Linux or a Mac they still have the program they most use right next to them. Saying We Don't support iPods to most people is a bad thing because people oddly enough like their iPods, I am not saying there are things out there that are better then the iPod but people like them and will use them. Saying no is saying you suck to your customers. But the radio and music indrustry seems to do that alot lately too.

What a world.

It's a screwed company anyway

[mmarlett]

TFA links to another article (from CNNMoney) that says

The company [SpiralFrog] aroused interest last fall after it announced its licensing deals with Universal Music and performing rights organization Broadcast Music Inc. But the company missed its early 2007 launch and instead underwent an executive shuffle that ended with the ouster of then-CEO Robin Kent. [Joe Mohen, SpiralFrog's founder,] has attributed delays to the time-consuming process of obtaining rights from music publishers and other technical issues."

So this company has been working at this for more than a year (which predates Universal's iTunes melt down). A quick search on that widely reported meltdown reveals this from The Times of London [timesonline.co.uk]:

It is unclear why Mr Kent was asked to leave the company, though a source close to the company said that it was because of differences between him and Mr Mohen, whose management style Mr Kent found "unacceptable".

"It was a kangaroo court - there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it," the source said.

This is not the behavior of a good business that is likely to succeed.

Prior art from a bygone era

[snowwrestler]

BMG invented Discman-resistant CD's with a light sand-blasting just before packaging.

But, many people claimed it was derivative of Geffen's efforts to create Walkman-resistant tapes using magnets.

Re:From the Spiral Frog FAQ

[WiseWeasel]

Wrong, Apple is choosing to NOT screw over their customers by refusing to license Fairplay. Apple apparently does not want Fairplay to succeed; they want to sell standard format content. Fairplay was just a kludge to pander to the labels' requirements for licensing, and Apple doesn't want to give it any more momentum than they have to. In effect, refusing to license Fairplay while owning the market for playback devices puts the labels in a position where they have little choice but to license their content for sale in standard formats, if they want any hope of keeping distribution under some control. I applaud Apple's moves, as an opponent of DRM on purchased content.

Re:Fixing the wrong problem

[TheGeneration]

If it works, they get money - if it doesn't, they don't lose that much, or even make just a little bi

This is false. They immediately lose 10% of their music revenues by not being playable on 90% of all MP3 players (the iPod.) But, that 10% number is more significant than you might think. Knock 10% off of the sales of most albums/singles and they fall right out of the billboard Top 10 list. When they fall out of the Top 10 list, their radio airplay drops. When their radio airplay drops, their music goes unheard, artists get forgotten. Meanwhile Universal has contracts with these artists that they owe money too, yet those artists aren't producing revenue in the form of sales because of Universal's stupid distribution decisions.

And so the downward spiral continues. If these CEO's had made the same decision about Wal-mart (15% of the music industry revenue, compared to iTunes 10%) those CEO's would be fired by their board.

This is what you get when you put lawyers before customers.

Simple DVDs good

[Roger W Moore]

In the end Universal is crippling itself.... 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.

How is this bad? I would frankly really prefer a simple "movie only" DVD. Having to wait for the menu video intro to play and then shift the cursor around to "play" every time I stick the disk in is not as convenient as simply inserting the disc and having it play right away as it does for the DVDs I make from our camcorder.

Having several hours of extra "documentary" footage on how wonderful it was to make the film really doesn't do much for me. I realize that some people might like it but does it really sell the DVD? Your comment seems to suggest that there are people out there who will base their decision on whether to purchase the DVD on whether it comes with these extra features and not on whether the film was any good.

Re:not MP3 - WMA

[Mmm_pickles]

So that's what the cool kids are doing these days? Good grief!