Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire."

I start my 2008 blog with a topic I recently emailed to some friends inquiring about a relatively new (about 2 years old) music download service called SpiralFrog. The attraction to this service is that it is legal and “free”. Sounds good, eh? Well, free in this case means you must view commercial advertisements in exchange for music downloads (in my book that ain’t free. a person’s time and attention is worth a lot – just look at how much companies pay to advertise to you). What do you get for your time? You get music! Cool, right? Well, the digital music files you are downloading are programmed to expire after 60 days unless you login to the SpiralFrog service and “refresh” the files and spend more time viewing more advertisements. That’s the 21st Century, capitalist definition of free. To further darken the picture, the files you download are not compatible with iPods nor even Microsoft’s Zune player (even thought MS is the creator of the technology that makes these files expire after 60-days). Not compatible seems to mean that once you put the files on an iPod they cannot be “refreshed” and will expire. So, for some these may be acceptable trade offs and so I encourage you to check out the service. But for me? I still go for buying CDs and ripping the files myself…

Here are some relevant links to explore:

Not iPod/Zune compatible

Nice overview of the service and problems associated with it
Personal response from PCworld.com blog

Random summation and opinion from geeksrus.com

…oh, btw, happy new year!

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