EMI to add free music to SpiralFrog
EMI Music Publishing is announcing tonight that they are partnering with New York startup SpiralFrog to distribute music online for free. SpiralFrog hit the news late last month with their groundbreaking partnership with Universal to distribute music for free (see our coverage for more details). Universal appears set to buy BMG (half of Sony-BMG) for roughly $2 billion in the next few days, so offerings through SpiralFrog could really explode. Major label music could be available to download for free, with ad support, as a general phenomenon before we know it.
The (big) downside here is that the music at SpiralFrog will be wrapped in a strange DRM that requires regular logging in the the ad driven SpiralFrog service in order for the music files to continue playing. Standard DRM of limited devices, copies and Windows only applies as well.
EMI calls itself the largest music catalogue in the world and currently carries stars like Sting, Nelly Furtado, Jay Z and Kanye West.
From Techcrunch
For a company profile about Spiral Frog please visit: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/profile-spiralfrog/