Vivendi Universal, the biggest music group on the planet have signed a deal with Spiralfrog to let surfers download the contents of its man-sized music catalogue for free.
The New York based company Spiralfrog will be launching the new service offering Universal’s songs for download in December – but in US and Canada only – bah!
As some old bloke in the pub used to tell us, “You don’t get nuffink for free in the world, no way, not ever,” and for once he was right – surfers wanting to gorge themselves on all that luvverly free music will have to endure tons of adverts, presumably of the targeted kind.
The dreadfully named Spiralfrog are looking to take on the mighty iTunes, and have high hopes that punters will be quick to switch loyalties when download prices of nuppence are whispered in their shell-likes, compared to Apple’s current rate of 99 cents per song in the US.
“Offering young consumers an easy-to-use alternative to pirated music sites will be compelling,” enthused Spiralfrog Chief Executive Robin Kent said.
Making it pay
With an estimated forty dodgy downloads to every legal download over the Internet, Spiralfrog could attract the huge number of users currently risking prosecution from pirate file-swapping services, making their money by sharing income from advertising with content partners like Universal.
Amongst the music industry cognoscenti, a few eyebrows have raised about the practicalities of the new service, with music industry specialist Josh Lawler telling the BBC: “The Internet is very much a viable media, but the trick is going to be getting it off the ground in the first place”.
“Spiralfrog will have to find a way to pay artists from the advertising dollars they are generating. But they’re not necessarily going to know how many advertising dollars there are and so some artists are going to be hesitant about it,” he added.
If Spiralfrog does get it right, the company could seriously shake up a market that saw 60 million MP3 players sold and 420 million single tracks downloaded last year.
“A wide music industry grouping representing the independent record industry, composers and songwriters, musicians and performers, music managers, music publishers and their collecting societies hosted a crucial round table meeting yesterday, chaired by the Smith Institute, to debate the creation of a progressive and innovative copyright framework that is fit for purpose in the digital age.”
The Copyright Levy laws were designed for analogue, but digital changes everything, control has passed to other players (ISPs, mobile operators, iPods etc) rather than traditional channels with physical controls. So the intent is to license these distributors. This will of course require working with them, understanding their business models etc.
These issues don’t just apply to the music industry and they’re gaining traction from other content industries and internationally.
Bulldog have just pulled out of the retail market and have decided to concentrate on the wholesale side and compete with BT Wholesale. Though part of this is that their parent Cable and Wireless (C&W) are trying to consolidate to fewer larger customers (i.e. broadband suppliers who then have lots of customers), part of the problem with having retail customers is you have to constantly upgrade your network to meet their growing bandwidth needs, and this gets very expensive very quickly.
This model is coming to the UK, BT’s broadband hub service is their first foray into an IP connected world, BT Vision (IPTV) is coming.
The BPI continued its policy of clamping down on illegal file sharing this week, when it contacted UK ISPs Cable and Wireless and Tiscali with requests to suspend 59 accounts.
In a statement on 12th July, the BPI stated “Early responses from both companies suggest that they will suspend accounts which have clearly been used for illegal filesharing” and indicated that it could supply detailed evidence on the other 16 Tiscali addresses. In an interview on More Four News Tiscali spokesman Richard Ayres said Tiscali’s message to the record industry is “Come to us, give us the details and we’ll absolutely work with you.” Which would seem to be in contradiction of Tiscali’s own letter, which also stated that “Tiscali does not intend to require its customers to enter into the undertakings proposed by you and, in any event, our initial view is that they are more restrictive than is reasonable or necessary.”
Coincidentally, the BPI action comes at the same time that the (US based) 
Last week the French legislature approved a new law which could radically change the landscape of digital audio. The so-called ‘iTunes Law’ is designed to break the control hardware manufacturers exert over the type of content that can be played by their digital music players and software. The result would be that companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Napster would have to make their data formats interoperable, thereby opening their systems to music from rivals. A regulatory body could be set up to police the sector.
The iTunes Law does, however, leave a get-out for the tech companies. A newly-added clause permits artists to exercise control over additional DRM. In short, artists could object to their music being transferred into other formats, thereby ensuring that current practices could continue unaffected. This loophole would require renegotiation of existing contracts, something Apple et al may wish to avoid given record companies’ desire to recoup perceived losses due to piracy. Lawyers observed that the new law is complex and its impact will be difficult to judge until it is tested in court.
UK British music recording industry trade association, the BPi, has today issued a statement that they have “successfully jumped the first hurdle in its battle to have unauthorised Russian download site AllofMP3.com declared illegal.”
The argument of the BPI is that AllofMP3 has no right to be selling the music, as they aren’t licensed to do so. AllofMP3 counter that they are “authorized by the license # LS-3М-05-03 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) and license # 006/3M-05 of the Rightholders Federation for Collective Copyright Management of Works Used Interactively (FAIR).”
Saturday saw anti-DRM protests at eight Apple stores across the USA organised by DefectiveByDesign, who are running an on-going ‘Campaign to Eliminate DRM.’
List of Apple stores affected
Apple’s hugely popular iTunes music download service looks set to face some mighty competition in the coming months.
Users wanting to transfer songs onto portable music players can subscribe to the $14.95 service, with tunes protected by anticopying software from Microsoft.
Noting that consumers have embraced satellite radio because it features dozens of channels with music chosen by experts, Harris reckoned that this could prove a real advantage to the Urge service.”You’ve got the experts in music here from MTV doing programming across a whole bunch of genres,” he commented.
Although Harris admitted that the iPod incompatibility issue was “a hurdle that we have to get over” (an understatement, we reckon!), he added that, “there’s a long way to go in this market,” pointing out that the zillions of iPods sold still represent a fraction of the potential audience for music downloads.
Major UK consumer broadband providers NTL are teaming up with BitTorrent, the developers of the world’s most popular peer-to-peer (P2P) application.
Naturally, rights holders and movie heavyweights weren’t too chuffed to see their content whizzing around the Internet for gratis, and quickly hired in squadrons of lawyers to apply pressure on BitTorrent.
Inga Chernyak, until recently, had a legal clerk job at an IP law firm in New York City. On the 26 January she was called in to the firms HR department and fired.
There may be those who think that it’s pretty obvious that is you work in an IP firm; wanting to train as an IP lawyer; you hold views that IP law is over restrictive; then have your name and photo featured in an article that starts by describing how to circumvent CD DRM protection and are a founder of NYU chapter of the Free Culture movement – you’re going to end up in trouble said IP law firm. 
In its submission this week to an MPs’ inquiry into Digital Rights Management (DRM), the influential National Consumer Council (NCC) spelt out its concern at current self-regulation, and called for new laws to ensure consumers’ rights to use digital content are protected.
People are finding they can’t play the DVDs they’ve bought abroad or make compilations of material that they have purchased for their own use. The NCC believes that the use of DRM can and is already constraining the legitimate consumer use of digital content. It is also undermining consumers existing rights under consumer protection and data protection laws.
Jill Johnstone, Director of Policy at NCC said; “Because of the current situation, consumers face security risks to their equipment, limitations on their use of products, poor information when purchasing products and unfair contract terms.