*with a catch - you know nothing is really “free,” right?
October 3, 2007, 12:00 a.m. EST
By KEITH GOOD, keithgood@bootlegontheweb.com
“Death to the yellow mouse!”
Spiral Frog (spiralfrog.com) went live on Sept. 17 offering free and legal music downloads. It used to be that downloading from Napster and Audiogalaxy was like Amsterdam: “this might be illegal in other countries, but hey man, we’re not gonna stop you.” The RIAA has since harshed our mellow. Instead of Copenhagen, we’re in Spiral Frog’s Soviet Socialist regime: the stuff is free, but heavily regulated.
Spiral Frog is an elaborate Rube-Goldberg of updating and downloading, the digital equivalent of the board game Mouse Trap. Since Spiral Frog makes money through advertising, navigating involves unnecessary steps which grind ad after ad into our eyes. Installing the download manager requires an update to Windows Media Player 11 (“ours go to 11”). It feels like we’re the yellow mouse watching a boot kick a marble which swerves through the chute so the swimmer can dive into the basket and trigger the falling net just so we can download a lousy song.
After finally jumping through the hoops, you’ll find the selection is very “eh.” Spiral Frog is all Clear Channel radio; some classics, plenty of Gwen Stefani, Rhianna and a sprinkling of grunge standards, but otherwise lacking. OK Go? Oh no. Muse? Nada. Flaming Lips, The Decemberists and Arcade Fire? Nein, non and nyet. My initial excitement, akin to a virgin on prom night, quickly deflated like an over-groped Wonderbra. I settled on Soundgarden and, after validating by typing those curly and hard-to-read letters, I was on my way to the Superunknown.
But the game doesn’t end there, Spoonman. Spiral Frog requires users to update their account every thirty days. Renewal requires entering personal information which is then used to sell more advertisements. The penalty for a lapse? Your songs quit playing. To further complicate this game of musical Mouse Trap, any songs ported out to an MP3 player stop playing in 30 days regardless. Also, playing .wma’s through applications like Musicmatch Jukebox can be a hassle. Essentially, Spiral Frog is a midsized public library. The songs are loaned rather than given and the selection is only so-so.
And even though this column is line after line of nay-saying, the bottom line is Spiral Frog lets you legally download music for free. You don’t have to worry about downloading viruses instead of songs (I’m looking at you, Kaaza), and .wma’s are the audio equivalent of fine crystal. “Outshined” shined even on $5 earbuds. So yeah it’s slow and it’s a pain and they only offer one Queens of the Stone Age album, but it’s free. And that’s a price I can pay any day of the week.
