Spiralfrog.com is a website that offers free music downloads.  It is legal because it is ad-supported, and has agreements to share its revenue with the labels.

The Good:

• Free, legal music downloads

The Bad:

• Digital rights management: Spiralfrog has very restrictive DRM.  The tracks only work with devices that support Windows Media Player DRM, and expire after 60 days if you don’t continue visiting the site.  This means I can play the tracks on my Creative Zen Vision M, but not on my Nokia N810.  Mac users are out of luck.
• Some of the major record labels are not on board with Spiralfrog’s business model, so their selection is not as broad as Amazon.com or iTunes.  I have downloaded Aerosmith, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Paul Anka, Oscar Peterson, John Coltrane, and many others, but was unable to find Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones.
• The website is a bit clunky.  Sometimes a download fails and you have to try again.  This happens more frequently if you continue browsing the site while your tracks are downloading.  I find it best to download one album at a time and do something else while it downloads.  My advice is to make friends with the “Try Again” button.
• The search feature is not very impressive.  It is very sensitive to misspellngs, and you sometimes have to get creative to find what you are looking for.

Conclusion

If you are on a tight budget and are willing to be a little bit patient, Spiralfrog.com is a good place to legally download free music.  If you have a little cash to spend, I recommend downloading MP3’s from Amazon.com.  Most of their tracks come as standard MP3’s with no DRM protection, so you can play them on any device and burn them to CD’s.

This article was written and posted from my Nokia N810.

© 2009, Jonathan Johnson. All rights reserved.