SpiralFrog.com is a new music download web site that is scheduled to launch in the US and Canada today. It allows visitors to download music and videos free of charge.
The download service provider is set to pay record companies a cut of its advertising revenue in order to avoid the legal hassles that sites like Napster faced in the early days of downloading.
SpiralFrog is hoping to snare those music fans that normally use online file-swapping networks (like LimeWire or BitTorrent) to share and download their music for free. SpiralFrog will also feature reviews and other information on its artists.
According to a statement made to Yahoo! Music, Joe Mohen, chairman and founder of SpiralFrog Inc. stated that, "we believe it will be a very powerful alternative to the pirate sites." He added, "with SpiralFrog, you know what you're getting... there's no threat of viruses, adware or spyware."
According to the SpiralFrog Web site, the company aims to deter users from posting copies of songs and videos they obtain there by requiring users to register and log on to the site at least once a month. Otherwise, the content will be locked.
SpiralFrog also requires users to complete demographic information such as their age, gender and ZIP code so they can determine what kind of ads the users see when they are on the site.
As of Monday, the service had access to more than 800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos for download, mostly thanks to Universal Music Group, which is the only major label that has licensed its music and videos to SpiralFrog as of its launch.
Even though the service is free, the audio and video files on SpiralFrog carry copy protections similar to iTunes Store downloads. Further, SpiralFrog content is not compatible with Mac computers, iTunes, or iPods. That will be the trickiest issue for SpiralFrog to get past since iPods are the leading portable music players on the market.
