jmcgready’s misc universe

Spiral Frog Music Service Leaps Into Launch:

The music service, which has had its share of business woes recently, cut a deal with Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group to build its catalog.
Universal opened up its collection, which includes top artists like Gwen Stefani, in return for a cut of advertising and sponsorship revenue.
Selling those little discs must not be working out so well anymore.

Users sign up for free, but must visit the site at least once a month to retain access to their tunes.
You won’t be able to burn discs, but you can transfer the music to portable players.
Just not the iPod. And that’s the catch.—Gregory Mon

Sorry - with all due respect, that’s not the catch -
what the real catch is more of the same nonsense that Ruckus gave us -
DRM’d WMA files, no iPod support, etc

To date, no DRM fix like the DRM fix for Ruckus.

From TGDaily.com:

The service is riddled with DRM copy protection. Users cannot burn the tracks to a CD, nor are they compatible with Apple’s iPod.
The files can be played on a PC, and according to Spiral Frog the tracks are compatible with other various digital music players.
However, each song can only be transfered to two players.

Users are also required to log into their Spiral Frog account at least once a month to keep the licenses to their downloaded songs active.

From Spiral Frog itself:

To get technical, the Download Manager application is implemented as a Microsoft .Net application,
and thus relies on the presence of the Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1 or later to be on your computer.

This comes bundled with Windows Vista and is preinstalled on most modern computers running Windows XP.
However, should your computer for some reason not have .Net Framework,
the set-up program for the SpiralFrog Download Manager will install .Net Framework 1.1 for you.
(You don’t need to know if the .Net Framework is there or not as the set-up program will check this automatically.)

This feature could get annoying quickly:

If you click your browser’s Stop button while downloading a song or video, the Download Manager will continue its job and,
even though the green spiraling status bar stops, your song or video will keep downloading.

Simply refresh the page – or click to go to any other page on the SpiralFrog Web site –

and you’ll see the download process has continued regardless.

And, of course the generalized non-Boot Camped Mac ignorance:

To download songs at the SpiralFrog Web site, you will need to be using
a computer platform that runs either Windows XP or Windows Vista.

You will also need to have Windows Media Player Version 10 or 11 installed on your computer.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

{life, observations, Tech Stuff, web 2.0}

Technorati Tags: spiral frog, DRM

Technorati Tags: copy protection, digital music players, downloaded songs, ipod, microsoft net framework, music service, observations, ruckus, spiralfrog, sponsorship revenue, technorati, universal music group, wma files

Tags: copy protection, digital music players, downloaded songs, ipod, microsoft net framework, music service, observations, ruckus, spiralfrog, sponsorship revenue, technorati, universal music group, wma files
SpiralFrog Web site, spiral frog, .Net Framework, Download Manager, Windows XP, DRM fix, download, music, song, computer, player, Users, Ruckus, catch, iPod, need

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
and is filed under Tech Stuff, life, observations.

Tags: copy protection, digital music players, downloaded songs, ipod, microsoft net framework, music service, observations, ruckus, spiralfrog, sponsorship revenue, technorati, universal music group, wma files