Universal to Offer Music for Free 356
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?"
Good News ... but .... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now if only I were a fan of some of Universal's Artists [wikipedia.org].
Guess I'll have to wait and see if the big companies follow suit.
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Re:Good News ... but .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the story [com.com].
Artists rejoice! (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Artists rejoice! (Score:4, Informative)
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No, the record company gets the royalties. Then they deduct the costs of marketing, distribution, and making the album. Then the artist gets paid.
A distribution model paid by advertising will not generate revenue for the artists AFAIK. But, the record companies would probably still charge the overhead involved in this. For the same reason that the record companies still charge breakage and distribution fees for tracks distributed ove
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"No, artists are supposed to recieve a royalty every time there song is played on the radio, jukebox or DJ, but you can imagine how often the lables are forgotten to be paid for the above, and how often the artists are forgotten even when the labels are paid."
I'm guessing you're talking about Europe? Here in the USA, licenses for airplay go through a couple of artists' societies called ASCAP and BMI. They are run by and for artists and the labels see none of the airplay licensing money.
Here's how B [bmi.com]
"The big companies"? (Score:5, Informative)
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"? (Score:4, Interesting)
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"? (Score:5, Funny)
I cant wait for Elton Johns new single : "Lucy in the sky with diamonds from Jarad"........ [jared.com]
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2slabz (RebelRock/Universal) 3 Doors Down (Republic/Universal) 10 Years 98 Degrees* Aaliyah (Blackground/Universal) Acroma Afroman Akon Ali & Gipp Ashley Parker Angel (Blackground/Universal) The Bangkok 5 (Execution Style/Universal) David Banner Baby AKA Birdman (Cash Money/Universal) Baby Bash Bee Gees Big Tuck Big Tymers (Cash Money/Uni
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Here's a more complete list [universalmusicgroup.com] of Universal Music's artists.
Re:Good News ... but .... (Score:5, Funny)
And Elton John is arguably one of the most popular recording artists ever.
Man, what do you listen to? Barry Manilow?
Obscure Music (Score:2)
If you want to know who I listen to, it's a very wide variety but I must confess I'm more prone to listen to local bands in the states, UK or Canada. Bands like The Unicorns (now Islands), Spoon, Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzales, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, Apo
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Re:What a load of crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Free music *check*: ads *check*: crappy artists *check*:
If it looks like a duck.... then yeah. its not too much different than radio.
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Enough ads! (Score:3, Interesting)
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Incase you haven't noticed not a lot of money goes to the artist. If artists want more money they just need to switch labels / start their own. Whats that getting a bad deal from indie labels? Well, then what hte records companies are offering artists is the BEST deal.
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And the money the "useless ad people" give to slashdot and other sites in exchange for page space, what does that go towards, spoons?
Chew on this: the "subscription only" model is the elite and priveleged track. Ad-sponsored sites allow anyone with web access, even from a public terminal, to be "empowered." Think of all of Negroponte's poor, starving 100-dollar laptop children; don't they de
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Man-o-Man, you dance better than Fred Astaire!
And such sterling examples! A Hive-Mind Encyclo-Sandbox in which the most obsessively compulsive disordered player wins, and a Govrnment-sponsored "news" site. If that's what my donations buy me on the web, thanks, but I, um, gave at the office...
For every Wikipedia getting by on donations (and remember, their
Not being able to copy the music? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And, of course, there's nothing to stop you from taking your newly cracked music file and opening it up in say, Audacity [sourceforge.net] and then subsequently editing out the adverts.
From there, you'll start to see them appear on various P2P file sharing networks, and the cycle continues...
Re:Not being able to copy the music? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Ad-supported websites haven't exactly been raking in the dough.
With TV and radio stations spending 1/3rd of their airtime on commercials, it's questionable if people will put up with the number of ads the RIAA is going to need to fund this idea.
The idea has potential, but I'm not exactly optomistic.
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Not much different from radio, really (Score:2)
Am I that odd for not finding the mere presence of ads all that objectionable? Sure, I'll bail on a service or site if the advertising it carries is intrusive, distracting or uses aggressive & coercive methods to gain
Leave it to Slashdotters to criticize FREE music (Score:3, Insightful)
"Horrors! I won't sit thru ADS to get free music!"
"It's encumbered with DRM! Help, I'm being repressed!"
"Bah -- the artist selection sucks!"
Ever heard the saying, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"?
For me, cost isn't the issue. (Score:2, Insightful)
I want to be able to play the music that I purchase on whatever device I choose. Period.
If I can't do that, then I won't participate in the service.
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I suspect I'll leap on board this, it might even inspire me to go get the odd CD. I'm with you though, as soon as they expect money, I expect freedom.
Re:For me, cost isn't the issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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I'd like to propose that the issue is the people desire music as a public good, like a state park. It currently has the characteristics necessary: non-excludable, and non-rival (you can't exclude others from enjoying it by your consumption and your consumption does not decrease the overall amount available).
The problem is, labels and artists are accustomed to making absurd amounts of money since America
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Honestly, I just don't give a damn about artists getting screwed over by the major labels. Those labels have one business model - try to sell as many copies of an album as possible, and their contracted "artists" are usually just hoping to hit the jackpo
Well, they should close down of course (Score:2)
Whether you believe it's right or wrong is irrelevant, the economic reality is that as the supply of something increases, the value of it drops and digital information being trivially copyable has an infinite supply. The value of digital information (any
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It isn't a matter of "should" (Score:2)
Digital information is trivially copyable, that's a simple statement of fact. All it takes is a single copy to be distributed exponentially. The cost or value of the bit of digital information essentially works out at zero. Copyrights, laws, even digital rights management systems don't ch
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Who's focusing on record companies? Your comment applies just as well to book-writers, programmers, etc etc etc.
Forget "should" and right or wrong, it's pure economics. It's like complaining about gravity or the speed of light.
Well...no. Concerns about what outcomes are acceptable, combined with knowledge of economics, is what you need in order to know what rules you ar comfortable with.
Digital info
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"The incremental damage done to a record company (since that's the focus of the article) is quite correctly thought of as insignificant by the individual performing the copying."
What do you mean by "quite correctly" ? The only head of a record company I've known ran an indie label with ten employees. At around the start of the P2P explosion he was paying himself about $25K a year. When people started sharing his music in lieu of buying, he had to lay off of his friends.
Naturally, that was his probl
Re:For me, cost isn't the issue. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is what they should do
1) make all art copyrights last 7 years.
2) release all music
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.
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The Dead did that for years; along with selling CDs/LPs/DVDs. Tape and trade concerts all you want, th
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In addition, why should I pay into the fund when the music will be free anyway?
While your other objections are true, the model the GP described actually partly circumvents the "free rider"/ no-marginal-benefit-to-marginal-contribution (that attaches to e.g. voting) in that every dollar you contribute slightly hastens the release date of the album, meaning your contribution does count.
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Great point - I hadn't thought of that. In addition, the effectiveness of this would rest on the artist's reputation for producing material - a few slips or releasing junk right before the escrow expires
Re:For me, cost isn't the issue. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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So do you think your rig
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Trust me when I say I am no fan of the RIAA's tactics regarding their customers, but at some point they need to make money. If you're willing to buy a DRM-free CD that is rippable, burnable and whatnot and don't mind paying $9.99(on sale)-$13.99
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Says Who? (Score:2)
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The submitter, wild_berry, who, surprise surprise, is yet another Slashdot submitter who fails to understand the articles cited in his own submission. Neither of the articles cited contain any mention of such a restriction.
Re:Says Who? (Score:4, Informative)
Not Bad, but not a Music source (Score:5, Insightful)
Which isn't a bad idea, acutally...
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I agree, I'd definately look into using this to try out some new bands by listening to a few songs before I decide to buy their cds which I can do whatever I want with.
Now the question is, how much of my identity do I have to hand over to these people for their inevitable laptop theft so that they can target their ads, and are they going to let me listen to whole albums, or just the best songs that get heavy rotation on the radio anyway?
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My recent music purchases (30+ CDs, 5 music DVDs and several t-shirts) have been entirely due to bands I've discovered by trying the albums via BT or sample tracks on their websites. (My brother has bought hundreds of CDs the same way; I'm more picky about my music.)
The sample excerpts on Amazon etc. don't cut it - many bands who sounded interesting from samples turned out to be like most Hollywood movies: the trailer was the only good bit. I watch movies and listen to
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Ads (Score:5, Insightful)
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Music used to be about expressing some emotion, a message, or telling a story. Now it's all about "we're so cool go buy our CD."
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DRM encumbered? (Score:2, Interesting)
TFA doesn't say anything about whether or not the music in question is DRM-encumbered. I see no reason at all to believe that it won't be.
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.
Re:DRM encumbered? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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You're absolutely right. From Yahoo News [yahoo.com]:
I don't want DRM even if it's free-as-in-beer, but I'd happily pay for non-DRM music even if it costs more than $0.99.
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My guess is that it'll be some sort of an audio stream embedded in a Flash app, just like YouTube or Google Video.
finally. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Trap? (Score:2)
Does Universal actually expect to make money off this, or is this a "straw man" venture designed to fail in order to show shareholders and politicians that strict DRM is necessary to guarantee profitability?
It's much older than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Oh damn you can bitch about anything can't you? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
More details? (Score:2)
Is it like Yahoo's service, where you can "download" the song and play it whenever you like, but you can't burn it to a CD? And if you want to move it to an external drive, you have to pay extra?
Or will this be a complete file that can be downloaded to my PC and media-shifted? (preferrably CD-burnable, and I'm sure someone will figure out how to get around whatever DRM they put on it).
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Hmm (Score:2)
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CD Burning (Score:2)
Oh yeah? Watch me!
Lindsay Lohan (Score:2, Funny)
Survey says... (Score:2)
I just took a look over @ VegasBigBoard, & the odds of that remaining a true statement for more than one month are level; less than one month is holding at 16:1; less than one week just moved up from 4:1 to 6 1/2.
I considered waiting and coming in when one week hit double-digits, but decided on a hedge and dropped some now, just to make it entertaining...
No listening for you, sir. (Score:2)
Works for me (Score:2)
Product placement (Score:3)
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.
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Kodachrome, by Paul Simon (Also mentions Nikon Cameras
Cadillac Ranch, Bruce Sprinstein
Pink Cadillac, Bruce Sprinsein
I'm sure there are others, but those are just off the top of my head. (Yes, I know these songs weren't written with advertising in ming, it's just that it's possible for a hit song to include an endorsement)
Name change? (Score:2)
Crazy Frog
ding ding dididing....
Is it enough? (Score:2)
Not for me. I'd rather pay for the convenience of freely usable music than get usage-restricted tracks for free.
Cheers.
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Eventually we should see CD Burning added to this service. You can do it in iTunes so why not.
Won't work with iPod (Score:2)
I already have this... (Score:2, Funny)
No more excuses... (Score:2, Insightful)
"I pirate to try out bands for free - I buy new bands all the time by discovering them this way, so I should be allowed to pirate because the artist makes money!"
"I only get stuff I wouldn't have paid for anyway, so no one's losing money anyway."
"I want to listen to music where I want, and if I can't pay and maintain all my rights, then I won't pay and will simply pirate the music!"
Well, since this is free and semi-portable (i.e. any web-ac
What's the big deal here? (Score:2)
Next Headline: RIAA Sues Universal (Score:2)
Can't you just see it? With record labels giving away music, they're taking away market share for RIAA's lawyers. They gotta sue someone or risk losing their jobs, so who else to go after but the record labels?
A good experiment - some will like it (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Really nothing to see here, except for the fact that Universal now realizes that music being heard leads to music being bought.
What makes you think those are the choices? (Score:3, Insightful)
What most people will continue to do is ignore itunes and spiralfrog and simply continue downloading the music for free.
Re:Woncer what DRM they will use... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Duh - we're talking about AAC+DRM here (Score:2)
Jesus christ get a clue.
Well then (Score:2)
Oh wait.
It was pretty obvious that he was talking about DRMed AAC files. If you are going to be pendantic about the name you might as well yell at him for using the term WMA when he meant Janus DRM.
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Flash is my guess. (Score:2)