SpiralFrog Launches, Offering Free (Ad-Supported) Music Downloads; Recording Artists Heard Weeping

SpiralFrog, a website which for months has been shrouded behind a beta tag, has now officially emerged as a venue on the Web for free music (audio and video) downloads, supported by advertising. The company has struck revenue-sharing deals with various members of the music industry, the largest partnership being one made with Universal Music Group, “the world’s largest record company” and the only major label in SpiralFrog’s list of clients to date. Thus far, the website has secured roughly 800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos for distribution to users, and “expects to have more than 2 million tracks over the next several months,” said the chairman and founder of SpiralFrog, Joe Mohen, according to an Associated Press report.

There’s one very significant piece to this puzzle that simply does not fit: free isn’t synonymous with music.

Despite the intentions of the site’s creators and the record companies allied with the venture to cut down on Web-based piracy with their unique distribution model, the words free and music simply do not go together. Sure, it’s all to be ad-supported, but if it comes at little or no cost to users to enjoy all the music in the world (ideally), the stuff’s essentially free, and music, in short, shouldn’t be free.

Why not? Well, music has value. Great value, actually. Yes, some music sucks, and some does not, but those are purely subjective points best discerned by each individual consumer. Which consumers have been happy to do since they’ve been able, really.

The purchase-to-own method has long been an accepted way of amassing collections of recordings, whether they be in the form of singles or albums. It’s always been that way. Why anyone would wish to stray from that simple model to one involving completely irrelevant things like advertisements is, very frankly, beyond me.

For decades, music fans have built libraries of their own, to enjoy in solitude as well as with others. Whether they are adults or youth, they’ve gone to retail outlets to browse releases, pick favorites, and proceeded to purchase them. Those they didn’t like, they didn’t purchase. Very simple, no?

With this new advertising-based music distribution model, as well as those operated on the basis of an all-you-can-eat subscription system, however, musical recordings have both been “cheapened” and debased to the point of total equality. Yep, debased. It’s very bad thing.

Music fans can now listen to (and possess the digital file of) any song, recorded by any artist, for one flat fee, or in SpiralFrog’s case, no fee at all. As many albums and singles as one can possibly engorge themselves on. That’s quite disheartening, to be honest. Everything in the music industry, in one fell swoop, is effectively made valueless. (Or at least has very, very little value, if we’re talking subscription models.)

I’m not taking the side of the Big Four. Don’t get me wrong, I think the execs at those places have exemplified what douchebags the corporate elite can frequently be when they’ve enjoyed themselves for far too long inside their ivory towers. I’m simply stating that the artists’ (genuine musicians, to be more specific) studio creations and live recordings are being tossed into a sea where everyone is more or less given equal financing and equal recompense. That is, if they’re given such funding at all.

Isn’t that, you know, wrong? The subscription and advertisement-supported models can be seen as good for recording houses, because they’re getting income, but these models are no doubt bad for recording artists. As money flows from subscribers and advertisers to Universal and Warner and so forth, there’s really no telling how and how much money is distributed to their respective contractors, a.k.a., artists. That clearly leaves a great deal of space for shady and unfair practices by record company management, which strangely enough, no one of great influence appears to have addressed lately.

Here’s the thing. In many cases, equality is a very good thing. But when it comes to musical success, there are winners and there are losers. (And quite a few souls in between, who we general refer to as “working musicians”.) It’s understood that that is the way the industry has operated for many, many years already. And it’s pretty much worked for everyone involved. So why mess with it?

The way I see it, SpiralFrog and the rest might be making deals with the recording companies. They’re hardly looking out for the recording artists when inking out those signatures. Which, by the way, are the people those using such cheap and “consumer friendly” services are purported fans of. Go figure.