It’s hard to imagine that it’s already been a decade since the music service Napster was in its hay-day. Millions of users were sharing songs as they pleased and discovered new artists they would have otherwise never had the privilege to enjoy. Unfortunately the free ride came to a grinding halt after a series of lawsuits from the record industry. Nearly a decade later, there’s a new kid in town that hopes to offer the same great music discovery experience as Napster, but this time with the blessing of the major labels. The service, Spiral Frog, is offering free music downloads to anyone who would want them.

Instead of charging its users a fee to download music, most of which will inevitably go to the record industry, Spiral Frog has adopted a new business model. They give away the songs for free and make the royalty payments to the record industry through their advertising revenues. The advertisements are just on their site and not in their music, so in essence, users will receive the same product they would receive from a pay online music store for free.

The company has already signed on a number of the major labels, including EMI, BMI, and Universal Music Group. They also have a number of smaller labels sign on including CMRRA-SODRAC, KOCH, Helene, GoDigital, Kudos, Click, IODA, Ingroove, and the Orchard. Because they have many of the major publishers, they have a substantial amount of music for their users to consume. The website currently has over 800,000 songs to download and plans to have over 2 million by the time their library is complete.

Currently Spiral Frog is somewhat limited on the number of platforms the music will work. You’ll need a Microsoft Windows machine to play the music, and if you want to put it onto an Apple iPod or a Microsoft Zune, you’re out of luck. You can however put your tracks onto any devices which make use of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure technology, meaning that you can take the music with you if you’ve got the right player.

Spiral Frog’s music library is downloadable in 128 Kbps or 192 Kbps for some more complex songs in Windows Media Audio format. The music videos that are offered on the site can either be downloaded two different qualities, 300 Kbps for those with limited connections and 1000Kbps for individuals have a high-speed internet connection.

Spiral Frog is a great way for users to get the music they love without having to pay exorbitant fees to online music stores or resorting to music piracy.

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