The free, ad-supported music service SpiralFrog has announced that music and videos from EMI will be available to North American users. The deal means music from artists like David Bowie, Coldplay, Norah Jones, Keith Urban, Lenny Kravitz, Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, and many others will be available via Spiralfrog.
“We are ecstatic about adding EMI’s content to SpiralFrog,” said SpiralFrog founder and chair Joe Mohen, in a statement. “Not only does this significantly expand our catalog of music and videos, it also demonstrates our continued content deal momentum.”
SpiralFrog enables users to download as much music as they like from SpiralFrog’s library for free, in exchange for viewing ads from SpiralFrog’s sponsors. SpiralFrog then channels ad revenue back to the music publishers to pay for the music they distribute. Downloads are protected using Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM, which means users cannot share them with others, or transfer to them to devices like Apple’s iPod or Microsoft’s Zune that don’t support Windows Media, although transfer to up to two “PlaysForSure” devices is supported.
In terms of registered users, SpiralFrog currently claims to be the third largest legal download site, and expects the addition of the EMI catalog will increase its user base.
