For consumers, SpiralFrog’s free downloads will come with many more strings attached than Apple’s paid ones do. Users of SpiralFrog will have to sit through advertisements, and will be prevented by special software from making copies of the songs they download or from sharing them with other people.
They will have to revisit the SpiralFrog web site monthly to keep access to the music they download. And the songs will be encoded in Microsoft’s WMA format, meaning they will not work on Apple iPod portable music players.
– New York Times, “Universal Backs Free Music Rival to iTunes“
I love Apple, and I love my iPod, but the one thing that really grates on me about iTunes Music Store product is that it’s only compatible with iPod. I don’t like a music store telling me what brand of record player I can use.
So now I’m supposed to get excited about a music service that makes me jump through multiple hoops to get songs that won’t play at all on my iPod? Genius.
Can iTunes convert WMA formatted files to AAC or MP3? I can’t remember now, and don’t have any WMA files that I can test it with.
Tags: Universal, SpiralFrog, DRM, advertising
Wade Rockett 