Culture

SpiralFrog strikes deal with EMI Music

Scheduled to launch in December, ad-supported online music service will offer EMI catalog for legal download.

Reuters

Oct. 6, 2006 5:00 a.m. PT

SpiralFrog, a new online music service, said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement with EMI Music Publishing to authorize SpiralFrog's use of EMI's music catalog for legal downloading in the United States via SpiralFrog's advertising-supported service.

SpiralFrog said the agreement with EMI Music Publishing follows its deal with Universal Music Group, a unit of Vivendi, announced last week, which allows SpiralFrog to offer free downloads of Universal's songs.

"It is a very exciting concept which fuses advertising with music downloads and other services to recapture consumer demand which has been hijacked by online piracy," said Roger Faxon, Co-CEO of EMI Music Publishing.

"Anytime we can create a new revenue stream for our songwriters and combat online piracy, you will see EMI Music Publishing leading the charge."

The rights of EMI Music and Universal combined include artists such as Sting, Nelly Furtado, Jay Z and Kanye West.

The SpiralFrog service, to be launched in December, experiments with a new business model that is funded entirely by advertising, as opposed to the pay-per-song model of Apple Computer market-leading iTunes music store.