SpiralFrog DRM music to play 60 days, then vanish
SpiralFrog users can continue to play songs obtained from the now defunct company for two more months before they become inaccessible, according to a source close to the company.
The ad-supported music service shuttered its Web site late Thursday evening and ceased operations, the source told CNET. Some customers of the service asked on Friday how long their music, which is wrapped in copy-protection software, will continue to play. A source familiar with SpiralFrog's operations said the service's digital rights management technology, designed to prevent unauthorized copying, will lock up the music indefinitely after 60 days. The songs could live again should SpiralFrog's assets be acquired and the new owner decide to relaunch the service, the source said.
DRM critics will certainly cite this as further proof that the technology is anti-consumer. The software remains hugely unpopular among many music fans for limiting their ability to play songs on devices of their choice. The critics argue that a person never really owns DRM-locked music because they need server keys provided by service operators to unlock the songs. But Christopher Levy, a vocal proponent of the technology and considered one of the leading experts in the field, questioned whether customers should be angered about losing music they never paid a cent for.
Christopher Levy
(Credit: BuyDRM)"(Protecting songs with DRM) was the only way that SpiralFrog could offer the model," Levy said. "The record labels refused to go to market without it. This was a very good business proposition for consumers. They received free music as long as they agreed to be bombarded by advertisements...I think it's hard to criticize the company...I think 60 days is very impressive."
Levy, who owns the company BuyDRM, says consumers deal with DRM every day in ways they don't notice. The technology is improving and soon it will be even less obtrusive. The technology helps protects the rights of content creators, consumers, and technologists, he said.
"When DRM is right in the middle of all three, that is where happiness is," Levy said. "Consumers are getting more comfortable with DRM and it isn't going away. It may need to change, but it's not going away."
Antipiracy software is used by the film industry and by music subscription services, such as Napster and RealNetwork's Rhapsody. But in the past year, download sites like Apple's iTunes and Amazon have rejected copy-protection software with the blessing of the major record companies.
The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday is hosting a conference on the use of DRM at the University of Washington School of Law, said Levy, who will speak at the gathering.
According to an FTC press release, DRM "is expected to become increasingly prevalent in the U.S. marketplace in the coming years" and address "the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations."
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
As far as sources of entertainment that we don't pay for directly DRM is alive and well and just as limiting as ever.
For example I probalby can't play Blue Ray at it's native resolution on any of my home equipment thanks to DRM crap built into Blue Ray. I'm gonig to have to buy new equipment. I'm in no rush, if something replaces Blue Ray HDCP (or whatever that particular nuisance DRM is) I'm on board since I don't have much invested in modern equipment..
I'm not sure that owning a company in a dying industry automatically qualifies somebody as an "expert".
DRM is going away, and good riddance.
Did anybody stop to think that maybe one of the reasons Spiralfrog went out of business was *because* of DRM?
However, SpiralFrog's ad-supported *rental" music is similar to Rhapsody To Go and Napster To Go, and you still hear people complain that they pay ~$15.00, transfer 1,000 tracks to their portable device, and the tracks stop playing in a month when they cancel their subscription. I've been a Napster To Go subscriber for years, and purchase when tracks are not available for subscription/rental, but mostly rent. I love NTG, and without at least this form of DRM, the rental model goes away.
So, let's not throw this blaket over *all* DRM.
I agree completely. I think DRM on purchases is terrible and anti-consumer, but DRM on rentals isn't so bad. There are without question some people where content rental systems are a great model. For certain types of content like films where most people will only watch it once or twice I don't see DRM going away completely.
There are a lot of pragmatic people like yourself who realize that DRM is a needed evil in a content rental system and then there are those who are absolutely opposed to DRM sometimes to the point that they refuse to recognize that copyright laws should exist. The crazy anti-DRM people give the more rational people who merely are opposed to DRM on purchases a bad name.
ad with great success to boot! the problems with DRM are
1) DRM limits the legitimate consumer
2) Pirates don't have to worry about DRM, they get stuff with the DRM removed
where is the incentive to be honest when there's a better version of the product available for free?
that's the twofold problem with using DRM.
Or maybe just jail, would that be a good incentive?
Nope, I just don't need to be burdened with the price of thieves that only works on me because I actually am honest.
Laws that only punish the innocent are harmful to society as a whole. Right down to DRM. Oh and if I can't enjoy content because of the DRM it's just going to hurt the company itself. Why would I pay extra for more hassle?
A CD sells for $10 with ten songs, so each song "must" be sold for $1. That's using old model economics. Online distribution is far cheaper than CD distribution. In fact, in many models it is the consumer that shoulders the distribution cost (e.g. P2P).
What should the correct pricing be? Maybe $0.10, maybe $0.01 per track. At those prices, other means of generating revenue from the creative work come into play: Ad-supported, merchandise supported, live performance-supported.
Many Bands and performers (including some notable names) have shifted to that model. Some release their music for free online, generating revenues from web advertising. Some make money from concerts, Some license their music to hardware manufacturers to bundle with their devices. Some attach music download coupons to merchandise and concert tickets.
Another possibiity is to get your music file wherever you can, then acquire or accumulate rights to those songs by buying merchandise, clicking on ads, or watching concerts (e.g. rights to five songs for a concert ticket).
Future revenue models for artists will be composed of these, and other yet to be devised ingenious revenue system. It gives more freedom to the artists, it encourages the growth of independent artists.
For consumers, online availability of music means a broader selection, bigger than any brick and mortar music store could possibly have. Furthermore, how many malls still have music stores? Where can a consumer buy a silver disk?
Most music fans want to pay for their music, either directly or by supporting the artist in some other way (buying their merchandise and tickets, etc.) but they can't because many music vendors are stuck in a business model that sells silver discs.
How many people today listen to music with a silver disc player? an 8-track player? a turntable?
$0.01/track --- wow, a million people love my new song, and I get ... $10,000 gross dollars. Maybe enough to cover the mortgage for the month in the end. Assuming there was no advertising at all. The 95% of songs that aren't popular get nothing at all. Music business and all it supports....vanish.
It is people like you who know so little, think you know economics, think the cost of the shiny silver CD has ANYTHING to do with the cost of the album. Start a business, start a band, do something. Don't tell anyone else how they have to make a living.
It is for consumers to determine the price they are willing to pay. Content owners have the task of figuring out the right price that results in the most revenue. This is high school economics.
Unpopular songs don't deserve compensation. Remember copyright isn't about a right to the content creators right to earn a living. No such right exists. It's about the right to market the content and try to make a living. If the musician sucks, they wont' do well. Again that's high school economics.
One last thing. The cost of distribution does play into the cost to the consumer. Once the product is digitial the work is done. You don't need to pay the band again and again and again to recreate the content. That's a fixed cost. Yes they want a slice of the pie, but their slice doesn't cost them more to make once made. Making a shiney new CD case though costs more than allowing a sale on iTunes or Amazon. Alas once more this is high school economics.
I don't see how stealing got into the picture here-it appears to have stolen the limelight, so to speak. I did point out that business models are changing. In recent years, there has been a marked shift to niche music, independent artists, and world music. So, it seems the consumer is, in fact, making a choice: to do without major label stuff and explore the enlarged world of music that's available online (Now, lets not get started here. Not all music available online is illegal. In fact, most isn't.)
Content creators have every right to sell their music as CDs, LPs, or even 8-track cartridges-there must be a niche market for 8-tracks somewhere. Do let us know how that works out.
The itunes music store (and some online music stores) have shown that the main benefit of downloading music is in the sheer convenience of getting it right here, right now, maybe at home or in a coffee shop with a Wi-Fi service. If downloading music was all about "free" or "stealing," the iTunes music store would have zero sales.
Socialism is not the anti-thesis of a free-market. Centrally planned economies run by government, monopolies, or state sanctioned oligopolies are the anti-thesis of free markets. We seem to have a lot of the last one in disguise.
If you had a song that a million people like, you should have a concert. You should sign up licensing deals for merchandising. There's big money there. Madonna figured that out when she signed up with livenation. Perhaps you should take your anti $0.01 argument to the bands that offer their songs for free on their website and make piles of cash in concerts and merchandising. Tell them they must charge more.
Charge what you want. If you think you can sell your creative work for $10, go ahead. Some works, I'd gladly pay $10 for. I've been trying to sell my Karaoke recordings for $100 myself--no takers, unfortunately, so I'm not counting on that revenue stream to pay for a mortgage.
I don't know what I should say about the 95% of songs that I don't like. In reality, I probably don't like 99% of the songs available today. Perhaps you could put up a charity fund? Now, that would be Socialist, which isn't really a bad thing because in Capitalist societies it's called philantrophy.
Music industry vanishing? Considering that a laptop, some free open source software like Hydrogen, audacity, etc, access to a rental studio, and a good sound engineer are all you'd need to create a good professional level piece of work, I can't imagine how that could be so. There also seem to be quite a lot of music clubs with really good bands sprouting lately.
As for starting a business and starting a band, I've done both. The bands I've helped out make money from gigs. But, please don't take my advice. If I see your $10 song online, and I really like it, I'll pay you $10, maybe even $20. Just don't expect me to buy it on CD, I'm too lazy to get out of the house. Besides, all the music stores I know have closed.
DRM does NOT work to prevent copyright infringement. It only frustrates legitimate purchasers in their attempts to use the product.
1. It limits choices for the person buying the music. I know I like to load up my MP3 player so I can listen to music when I am in the kitchen cooking or on the porch in the summer reading. The inability to transfer my music to me MP3 player or record it on a CD for my portable CD player just bugs me. When I buy music, I don't buy from anywhere that sells it with DRM. We still have a number of music stores in our area who are doing a brisk business (probably from other people who hate DRM.)
2. Pirates either obtain DRM free music or remove the DRM themselves. And it's not just music, software also usually contains some annoying bit of code that is the first thing to go if a pirate gets ahold of it. One of the reasons I can't stand DRM software is that if you lose or damage your disk, you are royally pooched. The DRM doesn't let you make a backup. And they pretty much ream you for a new disk. Ever have to buy a game twice just because your cat used the DVD or CD for a hockey puck one night?
The record labels and the software industry need to understand that DRM only serves to drive away and anger their customers. If someone is cheesed off enough, they are simply going to start using BitTorrent and avoiding the whole DRM mess. There will NEVER be an uncrackable DRM solution. There are just too many highly motivated individuals out there who are a lot smarter than the braniacs who come up with this junk.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go argue with a software company support tech, I can barely understand and who doesn't have a clue about anything beyond his script, about a problem with their DRM messing up my whole system (I hate Securom.....)
Only an idiot would sell me somthing broken and tell me I'm an idiot for noticing.
Like it or not, Fair Use predates copyright. It just didn't need a handy term until fair use rights were stripped away to make way for the creation of copyright. Now copyright's purpose (and it's a good purpose( is to allow for folks to try and market their creative works.
The catch here, and the one copyright owners often forget is that fair use rights have to exist for their work to have any value at all. No fair use, no way to enjoy the work and thus the work has no value.
We can argue until the end time where the line between copyright and fair use is, but you are utterly dependant on it's existance to make a living. When you understand then you would be better position to quit auguing with your audience and get on with making a living. Unless of course you suck in which case oh well. I've long since given up on my singing and song writing career for those very reasons.
Also, in the past, Apple threatened to shut down iTunes over royalty fees (not sure what that would have meant for its customers).
BOTTOMLINE: DON'T BUY DRM'D MUSIC OR MUSIC TIED TO A SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE.
Funny, I don't remember SpiralFrog being a service where you could give them money, let alone call it "buying". Considering they never charged a cent, you can't really complain about their use of DRM can you? Also, it's worth noting that you say "don't buy music tied to a subscription service" which is funny, because by its very definition you don't buy music tied to a subscription service, you SUBSCRIBE to it. Whole different kettle of fish. You're getting worked up over nothing, really.
However, with CDs, record companies let the genie out of the bottle: perfect copies and no DRM easily available to anyone with half a brain. Now that Amazon and Apple have dropped DRM, and with infinitely customizable internet radio like Pandora and Flycast, I don't see how any future DRM scheme (subscription or otherwise) can have a snowball's chance in Hades for music.
Remember Napster's tagline: "Do the math."
Well, people did the math and they don't want DRM on their music.
As a long, long-time subscriber to Napster To Go, I hope you are wrong about the life-expectancy of subscription DRM. It's time we differentiate between subscription/rental and purchase DRM. We almost all concur about the pain caused by DRM on purchased tracks. But, without expiration and anti-copying provided by RDRM (Rental DRM) on subscription and rental, the model goes away. I, for one, would hate to see that happen.
1) DRM is bad, especially when an industry wants to change the established premises of Fair Use. Drop the greed and fear, and learn how your customer is changing. The music industry almost killed itself with this approach and the only real reason they didn't succeed in their lockdown is a combination of not owning the physical format (CD) and people voting with their wallet. The movie and book industries have learned from these mistakes and are making sure they control the primary delivery formats and embrace digital distribution to mitigate the impact, which means we will be dealing DRM for many years to come.
2) Yes, many customers have a hyper-sense of entitlement that just because something goes digital, they can whatever they want with it. Again, Fair Use clearly defines these limits and distributing this content to world is definitely not covered. Content should be paid for if you consume it, in one manner or another.
What puzzles me is that SF's site heavily promoted Sony hardware, yet for some reason the Sony content distribution deal was not worked out. I'm glad if a 60 day window is being provided - much better than I'd expected from the sudden shutdown. It seems like this is a wonderful way for the content companies to get some more use from their huge catalogs of old music, and I hope the relevant players see the light.
- by running2 April 10, 2009 7:51 PM PDT
- im so bummed. i had a ton of their music. im way too broke to pay for songs and i sooo appreciated this service. i am way thankful though, to spiralfrog for the 2 years of great music i never wouldve had.
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