Ad-supported music and video download site, SpiralFrog.com, has officially launched (as in, it’s out of Beta) today.
Here’s a little more info about how the site is kept free.
The files on SpiralFrog are copy protected. They can’t be burned to a CD but they can be transferred to two portable music players and/or compatible phones at a time. They will not work with Apple products, however.
You must log into the site at least once per month or the tracks you’ve downloaded will cease to work. Basically, it’s the same subscription format found in Napster To Go, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and Rhapsody to Go, to name a few, except that you don’t pay anything.
Instead, upon creating an account, you give SpiralFrog some of your personal information (age, zip code, gender, etc.) and it uses this information to target ads to you based on your demographic.
Of note is the fact that the oft-detested Universal Music Group has licensed its music and videos to the site — a major win, as UMG is the largest major label.
None of the other big labels have signed up yet but SpiralFrog is claiming that it’ll be at the 2-million music track mark within a few months, so there should be plenty of consumables to suit everybody’s tastes.
Free online music service launches [Yahoo! News/AP]