Universal to Offer Music for Free

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?"

Re:Good News ... but ....

When iTunes was young, some guy tried to resell a song on ebay:
Here is the story [com.com].

Re:Artists rejoice!

Artists receive royalties every time their song is played on the radio.

"The big companies"?

RTFA, please. At least the first sentence:

Universal Music, the world's largest music company, has agreed to back a new venture that will allow consumers to download songs for free and instead rely on advertising for its revenues.

This is a big deal.

Re:"The big companies"?

But what if you use AdBlock or a hosts file to block advertisers sites? They won't be getting any money then, will they?

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.

Re:"The big companies"?

download songs for free and instead rely on advertising for its revenues.

What the article fails to mention is the adverising is the artists singing about a vendors product.....

I cant wait for Elton Johns new single : "Lucy in the sky with diamonds from Jarad"........ [jared.com]

Re:Good News ... but ....

You don't like Godsmack? 3 Doors Down?

And Elton John is arguably one of the most popular recording artists ever.

Man, what do you listen to? Barry Manilow?

Re:What a load of crap

30 second annoying junk you have to listen to before the song starts and of course

um, so how does this differ from a radio station? (or radio station broadcast over the net / satellite radio?) Obviously there is an 'on-demand' aspect, but really.

Free music *check*: ads *check*: crappy artists *check*:

If it looks like a duck.... then yeah. its not too much different than radio.

Enough ads!

I've tried to take a stand against ads myself. I'll subscribe to whatever I need, as long as I don't see ads. The way I see it, subscribing to slashdot (for example) puts money towards content and away from useless ad people. The only ads I want to see are when I do a google search. That's it! I'd rather subscribe (or even better, donate). I'm sick of the ad culuture, and it's got to stop. I won't be using this free music source because I already subscribed to Urge (plays for sure). At least more of that money is going to artists. With this, you have all sorts of ad brokers taking a cut.

Not being able to copy the music?

So when they realize we are able to copy the music, what happens?

Re:Not being able to copy the music?

Er, isn't the music already available on P2P networks? I don't think transcoded crap from DRM downloads will make it in the P2P world when direct transcodes from CDs are already available.

Is it enough?

Yes.

Ads are only a minor issue, I have seen ads all my life I know how to ignore them.

The proponets of free content will whine... but this way the record company gets what they want (money) and the consumer gets free (of cost) music.

Nothing ever has been truely free, if you aren't buying (or stealing) something someone else is paying to put it in your hands for there own reasons. That is the way the world has worked for a long time.

Re:For me, cost isn't the issue.

I'd like to violate every agreement I make for short-term benefit too, but I don't justify such desires on grounds of "freedom".

They produce the music so they can make a profit. I'm sure it would be great if everyone worked for free, but they don't.

The produce it knowing that they can sell it with certain conditions attached. Then they sell it with those conditions attached. Then people start to claim their "freedom" is being violated, and that they have the right to unilaterally violate those conditions.

Sure, music companies "should" just "trust" people not to give it away to everyone, really, they can't.

So what should they do? Just not make music for profit? Or, you accept that the artist "deserves" a cut proportional to listeners, but that the "record companies" take "too much". Do you know how difficult, and what a crapshoot it is, to promote an artist?

I'm not trying to troll. What should an artist and record company do?

Re:For me, cost isn't the issue.

Nice thinking inside the box there..
Here is what they should do
1) make all art copyrights last 7 years.
2) release all music /film / etc from greater than 7 years ago into public domain.

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.

Re:For me, cost isn't the issue.

If anyone could freely copy/use/alter digital music then much more value would be placed on *production* and *performance* of music than on *distribution* of music, which is as it should be.

Well, that isn't quite as it should be. Distribution is much more important than you make it out to be. Your favorite artist -- how did you hear about him/her? There is TONS of crap out there. How do you find the diamonds? You do not have the time to sift through all the garbage. And I think you're wrong about production -- if you can't draw a return from copyright, you can't capture any value off the production, only the easily copiable performance.

Artists would make money from concerts and sponsorships, as well as via commissions for new works. If Britney Spears promised to release a new album free to the world as soon as her fans had placed a minimum of $15 million into escrow, millions of teenage girls would put anywhere from $0.10 to $10 into the fund, the world would get more Spears (yeehaw...) and Spears would get $15 million.

I'm familiar with that idea, but sorry, but that's extremely wishful thinking. Most of them don't have their own money. Mommy will buy them a CD, but she won't make a contribution for them to that fund. Plus, I can imagine the geek reaction: "artist extorts money to produce next CD". I would point out it only works for artists that have *already* separated themselves from the chaff, but you anticipated that:

She'd have no distribution costs (sites would gladly trade bandwidth for eyeballs, not to mention the P2P channels), so the only thing she'd have to take out is production costs, which wouldn't be *nearly* as high as now.

What? Why would this affect production costs?

And she could proceed to trot around the nation doing concerts, just like she does now, and keep more of those profits too. Artists who are not Spears, or as popular as Spears, need to get popular by being good in concert and/or good in marketing, and/or willing to sign deals with the lesser devils that would replace the greater devils of today's industry. Variety would increase, live concerts would abound... what a wonderful world it would be.

Er, no. Wishful thinking is not an argument.

Look, there's a lot of stuff about copyright I don't like either, and I'm not really as pro-IP as I might have come off. But the consequencees of removing these rights is not insigificant, and anyone wanting to remove them should be aware of the costs.

Re:Says Who?

The submitter is sort of right - it looks like the device you transfer it to will need explicit support for the DRM. From the New York Times [nytimes.com]:

Customers will be able to download an unlimited number of Universal songs to their computer and one other device. They will not be able to transfer those songs onto a compact disc, and they must visit the site at least once a month to maintain access to their music.

Not Bad, but not a Music source

What they are really saying is that they will let you try listening to their music without paying for it first. If you want to do anything with it, you have to pay.

Which isn't a bad idea, acutally...

Ads

I wonder how long it will take them to work the ads into the audio files themselves. 3 minutes of music sandwiched between 2 30 second commercials is probably inevitable.

Re:DRM encumbered?

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.

You don't watch TV or listen to the radio then? I do: they're free, and they're supported by adds. But it doesn't give me the option to view or listen to the program at any time I want. So sometimes I buy DVDs or CDs.

The proposed service has more freedom than radio, if we disregard DRM for the moment, so what's the big deal?

Plus, if you're one of UMG's artists, you can download your own song twice a day for a source of extra income!

finally.

I've wondered how long it would be before a consultant somewhere said, 'you know, we should adapt or we risk dying', and this is what it is, finally a company with a financial interest in the matter is sitting down and trying to hash out an idea of how to make the new medium work for them.

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.

It's much older than that.

This is an attempt to bring the old business model of terrestrial radio to the Internet. It's no different than listening to a commercial radio station's Internet stream, apart from the lack of cheesy locally-produced ads for Slappy's Bait Shop and Ice Cream Stand.

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.

Oh damn you can bitch about anything can't you?

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?"

As if you even needed immunity from litigation, or you had some intrinsic right to this music. The only people that need immunity from litigation are those breaking the law

Here's a content producer. They want to GIVE you their content for free online, in a distribution model simliar to one that most of slashdot has been having wet dreams about since Napster 1.0 was released. Shit know when you got it good and stop your bitchin lol!

If someone wants to give me something for free I'm not going to whine just because they want me to do a certain thing with it - free restricted music is better than no music at all...

Re:Woncer what DRM they will use...

AAC is Apple-only.

AAC [wikipedia.org] is NOT an Apple-only format. The Fairplay DRM [wikipedia.org] that Apple uses on their songs purchased through iTunes is Apple-only, but non-DRM AAC is available on any music player that wants it.

Product placement

Why hasn't the product placement concept come to music yet? Since people are downloading music for free from all kinds of sources and there is no stop to it, why not put the advertising in the music? I can't imagine that Brittany Spears would complain about having to incorporate "Coke" or "Victoria's Secret" into a song. Here is an example product placement in a popular song:

I am going to the corner, gonna buy some iPod bling.
Would you pardon me if it's a black 60 gigabyte t'ing
Good golly, miss Molly, sure like to ball.
When you're rockin' and a rollin' can't hear your momma call.

A good experiment - some will like it

In my opinion, the article's concept is likely to have a good impact, but on many levels. I think it is important to see that if this isn't directly successful, it may be the precursor to something much more successful.

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.

Congratulations. Universal Invents Radio

User listens to music for free, but there are ads. Where have I heard of this before? Lots of Internet radio around, like Pandora [pandora.com], that nominally doesn't allow the music to be captured, played on a portable device, etc., except if you find where the files are cached, and rename them to SomethingUseful.mp3.

Really nothing to see here, except for the fact that Universal now realizes that music being heard leads to music being bought.