Music download deal bypasses NZ

New Zealand music fans will miss out on a free download service set to rock the international entertainment industry.

Universal Music, the world's largest record company, yesterday shook up the industry by announcing it would make its song catalogue available as free internet downloads.

The music will be available from Spiralfrog.com in the US and Canada from December, and become available in Europe in early 2007.

It will be one of the first sites to offer free music legally, allowing fans to download songs by some of the record company's list of artists, including U2, Gwen Stefani and The Roots.

Revenue will come from advertisements featured on the website, although questions remain over how the artists featured will be paid.

However, Universal Music New Zealand managing director Adam Holt said there were no plans to launch the service here.

It is understood the New York-based company will track visitors to the website through Internet Protocol (IP) address, preventing those from outside the United States and Canada from downloading the free tunes.

Mr Holt said there had been no discussions with Spiralfrog here, and few details were available on the nature of the North American model.

As the system was advertising-based there were doubts New Zealand had the population and level of online advertisers to support such a model, he said.

The Spiralfrog site is expected to combat market leader Apple's iTunes' service, which charges per song.

Downloads from Spiralfrog will not be compatible with iTunes' service and iPods.

The iTunes' service is also not available in New Zealand.

Shaun Davis, managing director of digiRAMA, a New Zealand website that charges uses per song for legal music downloads from four of the world's leading music companies, said it was too early to tell how the new model would impact on on-line music sellers.

He said moves toward free music were good for the industry in making it less attractive for listeners to download music from illegal websites.

American based Spiralfrog is also understood to be in talks with EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music in hope of signing up more record labels.

- INDEPENDENT