Spiralfrog.com - legal free downloads?

[sachmo71]

Not sure if anyone had any experience with spiralfrog.com, but here's a blurb from their FAQ:

Free Music?
How come there's no cost – what's the catch?
SpiralFrog is an ad-supported Web site. We sell ads on our pages to advertisers who want to talk to you. And we give the majority of that advertising revenue to the music publishers and labels who own the music you're downloading.

Most of our song and video downloads take a short, consistent amount of time to complete, during which we encourage you to keep discovering new areas of the Web site. Every page you visit allows us to serve more advertising, thus building the revenues we can pay to the content creators.

We do NOT ask you for a credit card. But we do ask for your time and attention. And, for that, we thank you…

Do I have to become a SpiralFrog member, and what does that involve?
To download songs and videos, and to watch streaming videos at SpiralFrog, you do need to register for membership. But it's easy...

As part of the registration process, we ask you for some very basic information – your email address, age, gender and your Zip Code/Province/Territory code, and we’ll ask you to make up a user name and password. Once you’ve submitted the completed registration form, we’ll send you an email containing a link back to our site to confirm your registration.

Once you’re back at the SpiralFrog Web site, we ask you to install a small application – less than 2MB – which we call the Download Manager. This software works with your browser, allowing you to download songs and videos from SpiralFrog.

To download songs at the SpiralFrog Web site, you will need to be using a computer platform that runs either Windows XP or Windows Vista.

You will also need to have Windows Media Player Version 10 or 11 installed on your computer. To download Windows Media Payer Version 11 free from Microsoft, click here.

How often do I renew my membership?
To keep downloading songs and videos, and playing all that you've downloaded, you must renew your SpiralFrog membership every 30 days.

The renewal process is very simple – we ask you to sign in with your password and email address, to type in some slightly-distorted squiggly letters so that we know you’re a real person, and we ask you to answer some questions about yourself.

The information you give us during the renewal process will never be used on an individual basis, but will help us aggregate information we provide to our advertisers. (Such as, "Over 36% of our audience intends to purchase a car in the next six months.") This, in turn, helps us to better target our advertising, thus increasing our advertising revenues, and providing the content creators with more cash for the songs and videos that you get to download at no cost.

What happens if I don't renew my membership?
A couple of things happen if you don’t return to the SpiralFrog Web site and renew your membership every 30 days.

On Day 31, you will no longer be able to download songs or videos from our site, but the music you have already downloaded will continue to play on your computer and portable player for another 30 days.

However, if you choose not to renew your membership after 60 days, on Day 61 all the songs and videos you have downloaded from SpiralFrog will no longer play on your computer or portable player.

At any time, you can renew your membership – even after Day 61 – and your music licenses will be restored, and your music will be good for another 30 days. You will NOT need to re-download your files.

The songs you download from SpiralFrog are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM), and are programmed with a license to play only for the period that you maintain your membership to our Web site. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a requirement from the record labels and publishers who license the music to us. However, if you keep your SpiralFrog membership up to date, you won’t even notice the built-in DRM as we’ve tried hard to keep it in the background as much as possible.

As your membership approaches the end of each 30-day period, we will send you an email at the address we have on record for you to remind you to renew. You can also see how many days you have left to your membership in the message located in the main navigation bar at the top left-hand corner of every page at SpiralFrog, along with a link to the renewal page.

How does my portable player know that I have renewed my SpiralFrog membership?
Renewing your SpiralFrog membership will update the licenses to the song and video files on your computer. To keep the songs and videos playable on the portable device(s) you’ve transferred them to, you need to sync them up with your computer so that it can update the licenses.

But, since you'll probably be downloading music from SpiralFrog on a regular basis, and then transferring those songs to your portable device(s), this process should happen automatically. However, please note that you’ll need to sync up your portable device(s) with your computer at least once a month to keep them up-to-date with the licenses.

How do I download music?
You download music from an album, song or video by clicking the Download icon associated with the song or video you want to download to your computer.

The song or video you have selected goes into the Download Manager (in the top right-hand corner of every page). However, before the download starts, you’ll have to do is type in the four lower-case letter code so that we know you’re a human being – and not some clever programmer writing scripts to steal this music and not give anything back to the content creators. (Please note that if the letters are a little too distorted to read, simply click on the “Click Here To Refresh” link, and we’ll serve you up some different letters that may be easier for you to read.)

You only have to type in the four-letter code the first time you download a song or video each time you visit our site.

You can see the progress of the download by the movement of the green spiraling status bar. Click the “Cancel” button if you’ve selected the wrong song to download.

While a song or video is downloading, you can keep visiting new pages – the Download Manager stays with you, showing you the progress of your download. You can keep clicking to download new songs and video, and they will simply go into the queue to download. Please note that if you want to delete a song or video from your video queue, click on the “Remove” button.

You're not compatible with Apple’s iPod, or the new Microsoft Zune player, right?
We're not compatible with these devices. However, the songs and videos you download from SpiralFrog will play on any computer platform capable of running Windows XP or Windows Vista, as well as all portable devices or cell phones that play WMA music files and have implemented the Windows DRM support.

Click on the following link for a list of compatible portable music players and cell phones. http://www.playsforsure.com/FindPortableDevices.aspx

This reminds me of the days of the "free" isp, and all you had to do was deal with ads on the sidebars of your screen. I never bothered with that, even when I was poor...I wonder if this one will hook me?

I can get that Helmet album I've always wanted but was too cheap to buy, though...

Anyone have any experience with this, or something similar?

[DaddyTorgo]

interesting idea...interesting business model...dunno

[johnnyshaka]

A co-worker has been using this site for about a week now and has also found a way to get the content onto his iPod. No complaints from him, thus far.

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by johnnyshaka

A co-worker has been using this site for about a week now and has also found a way to get the content onto his iPod. No complaints from him, thus far.

Is he willing to share the knowledge?

[dervack]

Tunebite?

[MJ4H]

good grief someone tell me when the registration works again

[SirFozzie]

*sniff sniff* I'm wondering if this is the latest Viide/MediaDefender trick..

[ThunderingHERD]

Unfortunately, I can't imagine that they're going to generate enough revenue to stay afloat.

As for the playing the content on a portable, SpiralFrog just uses your standard WMA files, so I'm assuming the DRM can be removed easily with existing software. Or you can play them w/ the DRM if you have a WMA DRM compatible player (obviously, the iPod doesn't qualify).

That said, stripping the DRM kind of negates the whole "legal" part of the "legal free downloads", don't you think?

[Easy Mac]

no more than ripping cds from a cd

[ThunderingHERD]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

no more than ripping cds from a cd

You'd think so, but the DMCA disagrees.

[Izulde]

Available only to residents of the US & Canada.

Heh.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by ThunderingHERD

You'd think so, but the DMCA disagrees.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

MWAHAHAHA *evil cackle*

Instead of refreshing the tree...strike the root

quality website btw