Free music and videos?

How?:

They make their money from advertising and pay record labels from that fund!

http://www.spiralfrog.com/


Just saw this on the news so expect some lag from them being pounded with traffic.

Looks like their download manager and site only like IE so far.

.

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

I'll bet it's a Digital Rights Management (DRM) testbed site for M$. It only works on XP & Vista, Windows Media Player v10 & v11 or Portable Media Players that recognize DRM, and is a marketing gold mine.

You have to renew your membership every 30 days, mainly so you can take a survey. It also renews the DRM stamp on all your downloaded music. If you don't renew, you can no longer download, but everything you've already downloaded will play for another 30 days. After 60 days, nothing will play until you renew.

You have to install and use their download manager, which limits you to one song at a time so you can "enjoy every page of our Web site while you're downloading, and all the time allowing us to serve advertising messages about products we think you may want to know about" (quote from the FAQ).

I'm not saying this is a bad thing or not, just wanted everyone to be aware of what is really going on, IMO. I plan on registering as soon as I set up a new email address to be used exclusively for SpiralFrog. ;)

[EDIT] And yes, the site appears to be getting hammered right now[/EDIT]

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Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

Thanks, Labbie,

They are wma files but can be converted easily to mp3. I've only downloaded about 10 songs but there where no pop-ups or page changes at all. No ads spooled on the page that were not already there. Which was not many or even noticable.)

Downloading is one song at a time but it adds tracks to a list so you can just click on the download button in the list to begin downloading the next song. You don't have to sit and wait for the download of one song to complete, to add songs to your list of items.

I haven't received any spam emails from them yet but I've only just registered today. No private information was asked for. Just an email address and a password.

Thinks will probably change so now is the golden time to get some songs.

:)

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Yeah, I've got a list downloading now. It's unfortunate that it stops between each song for you to click to start the next one.

I don't have a problem with WMA files myself, but I will probably convert them too (if possible, haven't tried yet). The FAQ said something about proprietary file formats, so it may not be possible. If it is possible to convert them to MP3s, would that take away the DRM stamp?

Yeah, other than the birthdate (I lied, but it's close) and the zip code (lied again, close again), there wasn't much personal info asked for. I did give them my real name, but thought about lying there too. ;)

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Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

They just log your IP anyhow so you could have said you were Ulysses S. Grant of Peking, China, age 107, and it wouldn't matter. lol

I haven't tried converting to mp3 yet but will advise when I do.


Thanks Labbie!

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Now if I could just remember what song I was thinking of over the weekend...

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Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

:D

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss