You could never guess what SpiralFrog actually does from its name. While that's true for many other companies, SpiralFrog makes an attempt to sound descriptive or perhaps deceptive. No one would blame you if you thought they were into croaking amphibians, which was what I thought initially... until I remembered an article I read way back about it.
SpiralFrog doesn't have anything to do with four legged creatures, in fact that's not even close. What SpiralFrog aims to provide though is free music and videos. Wow isn't that great? Just one tiny problem. It's ad-supported. And you have to login once a month to refresh your files. And you can't transfer songs to your iPod. Hey didn't I mention there's only one catch?
There's another reason why this business model may not work out too well - rippers/converters.
Remember the last time AllofMp3 gave away free songs from their catalog? The songs could only be played from their special player but someone designed a way to extract them to mp3 files. And AllofMp3 changed it. And they got around it. And AllofMp3 tweaked it again. But they bypassed it again. Eventually AllofMp3 got sick of it all and stopped the giveaway.
Another company, Qtrax, also has similar ideas, though they aren't quite ready yet. Maybe they should wait to see how SpiralFrog does before going live. AllofMp3's free music lasted only a couple of months.
Edit: By the way, this service is for US and Canada citizens only. International users are stuck with *other ways* of acquiring free songs.
Edit2: Last100 has a detailed review of what you can expect at SpiralFrog.
[Link: SpiralFrog]
[Source: AP]
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
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