SpiralFrog Looks to Leap Over iTunes

SpiralFrog,a new online music company, plans to offer free music downloads to consumers. Not just streaming media, mind you, but downloadable, storable music files that can be tranferred to a portable player. Free. The plan is for advertising revenue to pay for it all. What SpiralFrog has to offer right now is millions of songs from the Universal Music Group catalog, but the company is in talks with EMI and Warner Music Groups as well. For downloaders, quite a few strings are attached. Users will have to sit through advertisements, will be prevented from sharing files, and will have to revisit the SpiralFrog Web site once a month to keep their music. Biggest drawback: The music files will be available in WMA format--meaning they won't be playable on an iPod. That hurts. But still, it's free music. The service is expected to begin in December.