Universal Music Group Signs with SpiralFrog for Advertising-Supported Downloads

Universal Music Group (UMG) agreed to make its extensive music catalog available for legal downloading in the US and Canada via SpiralFrog’s advertising-supported service. SpiralFrog will offer users of its no-cost web-based service the ability to legally download music.

Microsoft’s DRM is built-in to all audio and video content as part of measures that SpiralFrog and its partners are actively taking to address piracy.

SpiralFrog plans to launch a beta of its advertising-support download service in December.

http://www.spiralfrog.com

• SpiralFrog is headed by Robin Kent, who previously was Chairman and CEO (2002-2005) for the global media communications agency Universal McCann Worldwide, part of McCann-Erickson. SpiralFrog’s technical team is led by Vesa Suomalainen (CTO), who joined the company in May 2004 after working at Microsoft for 12 years.