Last night I went to a lightly attended, (I assume due to the distraction of the best baseball team in the world beating all heck out of the CR’s), BIMA event along with two of my co-workers, where we were almost instantly pounced upon by a rep from SpiralFrog www.spiralfrog.com . This rep was very excited and proud of SpiralFrog’s offerings and was going to tell us all about it no matter what. I recognized the name and told him I had seen their logo before, but that I was unaware of their product. SpiralFrog, new to North America as of September 2007, is a downloadable, ad-supported music site that allows users to download free music legally. It operates on a rev-share model and is on a mission to save the music industry while shinning the spotlight on the true heros--advertisers. The company is headed up by Joe Mohen, who was quoted by an article in Online Media Daily (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=67512&Nid=34366&p=338449) as saying, “[our] main competitor is piracy”. Overcoming the wide-spread use of illegal music sites is what SpiralFrog is here to do. SpiralFrog downloads are in WMA format and unfortunately are not ipod compatible--so dig up those old-school MP3 players!—but, the music is free and legal. If SpiralFrog gains momentum it could really become the new big thing in music downloading since it is likely to draw consumers from both the subscription world of Napster and Rhapsody as well as from the large pool of illegal downloaders. If SpiralFrog becomes successful in the music realm, who is to say it couldn’t work for other downloads, like movies, video games and ringtones? With SpiralFrog, advertisers will have a new and big opportunity to target the estimated age group of 18-34 year-olds and look like the cool kids while doing it. After all, who doesn’t love an advertiser that gives us free music without the risk of virus?

Labels: advertiser opportunity, downloads, music