A look inside Spiralfrog's free major label download service
SpiralFrog's Canadian only beta just opened this week, after months of speculation as to what the service -- originally announced last August -- might look and act like. The long and short of it is; The service works as advertised, it doesn't include audio advertisements as many originally speculated and, they have a significant catalog on offer. There are some serious catches involved though so, read on for the full review and a screenshot tour of the first true "free and legal" music download service offering up major label tunes.
Getting the SpiralFrog client installed and running wasn't exactly easy. First, SpiralFrog is an IE only service, due to heavy use of ActiveX (which also means it's not Vista compatible either); So, no Firefox for you, although the SpiralFrog FAQ does offer help getting the web client to run in IE Tab, a Firefox extension that lets you run IE only sites in -- you guessed it -- Firefox tabs. What's worse, IE 7's default security settings prevent users from logging in to SpiralFrog once they've created an account.
Email to SpiralFrog's tech services netted nothing more than an admonition to spell the domain name correctly and to clear cookies, although I eventually figured out on my own that adding SpiralFrog's domain to the list of "Local Intranet" sites in IE's security settings would do the trick. All said and done I spent way too much effort getting SpiralFrog downloaded, installed, and figuring out how to make it run. It's a pretty safe bet that the average computer user would have given up long before I met with success.
Once up and running, the actual download client is almost invisible. Spiral Frog's browser interface is nice enough -- clean, simple, effective -- but not exactly groundbreaking. Clicking on the 'Download' icon queues up the chosen file in SpiralFrog's download manager. No queuing up and raiding of the whole catalog here; it's strictly one song at a time.
In fact, once a song is downloaded, you're prompted to respond to a captcha in order to "Activate" the tune you've just downloaded. Uhg. Really? It gets better... Fail to enter the captcha in the time allotted (60 seconds from the completion of the download) and you'll find yourself downloading that song again, just to get another chance. In other words, don't walk away from the computer while you're building your music collection; The SpiralFrog demands your attention. I can understand the need to show lots of advertisements in order to pay for the song license but, this seems like an undue burden to download a track that's going to expire in just 30 days time.
In order to keep your SpiralFrog music collection active and playable, you'll need to head back to SpiralFrog's website every 30 days and enter yet another captcha.
The sound quality of downloaded tracks is 128kpbs, equal to most other download services, and SpiralFrog claims to have 550,000 songs on offer at current (although many songs which are browse-able through SpiralFrog don't offer a free download option, and instead have an option to "Buy" which leads to Amazon.com). I've theorized before that SpiralFrog is an "end run" around royalty payments to artists, and so far no one from SpiralFrog has been able to clarify for me how the artists are compensated. When you download a track from SpiralFrog, you're only getting it for a 30 day span; There is no sale involved. That's an important stipulation because, most recording contracts with major record labels would constitute this as a "promo" copy, therefore relieving the label of any responsibility to pay the artist a portion of the money they receive.
The end result? SpiralFrog is totally uninspiring. I'd be worried about artists and the proper payment of royalties if I thought that SpiralFrog had a ghost's chance in hell of wide-ranging success but, I think we're assured of its eventual failure. Sure, they might attract a cash strapped teeny-bopper market who are willing to spend free time downloading songs painstakingly one-by-one; entering the captcha for each tune and returning every 30 days to re-activate their libraries but, on the whole SpiralFrog offers very little in the way of convenience, community or value added enhancement to the music experience.
Getting the SpiralFrog client installed and running wasn't exactly easy. First, SpiralFrog is an IE only service, due to heavy use of ActiveX (which also means it's not Vista compatible either); So, no Firefox for you, although the SpiralFrog FAQ does offer help getting the web client to run in IE Tab, a Firefox extension that lets you run IE only sites in -- you guessed it -- Firefox tabs. What's worse, IE 7's default security settings prevent users from logging in to SpiralFrog once they've created an account.
Email to SpiralFrog's tech services netted nothing more than an admonition to spell the domain name correctly and to clear cookies, although I eventually figured out on my own that adding SpiralFrog's domain to the list of "Local Intranet" sites in IE's security settings would do the trick. All said and done I spent way too much effort getting SpiralFrog downloaded, installed, and figuring out how to make it run. It's a pretty safe bet that the average computer user would have given up long before I met with success.
Once up and running, the actual download client is almost invisible. Spiral Frog's browser interface is nice enough -- clean, simple, effective -- but not exactly groundbreaking. Clicking on the 'Download' icon queues up the chosen file in SpiralFrog's download manager. No queuing up and raiding of the whole catalog here; it's strictly one song at a time.
In fact, once a song is downloaded, you're prompted to respond to a captcha in order to "Activate" the tune you've just downloaded. Uhg. Really? It gets better... Fail to enter the captcha in the time allotted (60 seconds from the completion of the download) and you'll find yourself downloading that song again, just to get another chance. In other words, don't walk away from the computer while you're building your music collection; The SpiralFrog demands your attention. I can understand the need to show lots of advertisements in order to pay for the song license but, this seems like an undue burden to download a track that's going to expire in just 30 days time.
In order to keep your SpiralFrog music collection active and playable, you'll need to head back to SpiralFrog's website every 30 days and enter yet another captcha.
The sound quality of downloaded tracks is 128kpbs, equal to most other download services, and SpiralFrog claims to have 550,000 songs on offer at current (although many songs which are browse-able through SpiralFrog don't offer a free download option, and instead have an option to "Buy" which leads to Amazon.com). I've theorized before that SpiralFrog is an "end run" around royalty payments to artists, and so far no one from SpiralFrog has been able to clarify for me how the artists are compensated. When you download a track from SpiralFrog, you're only getting it for a 30 day span; There is no sale involved. That's an important stipulation because, most recording contracts with major record labels would constitute this as a "promo" copy, therefore relieving the label of any responsibility to pay the artist a portion of the money they receive.
The end result? SpiralFrog is totally uninspiring. I'd be worried about artists and the proper payment of royalties if I thought that SpiralFrog had a ghost's chance in hell of wide-ranging success but, I think we're assured of its eventual failure. Sure, they might attract a cash strapped teeny-bopper market who are willing to spend free time downloading songs painstakingly one-by-one; entering the captcha for each tune and returning every 30 days to re-activate their libraries but, on the whole SpiralFrog offers very little in the way of convenience, community or value added enhancement to the music experience.
