SpiralFrog Update: It's Off my PC
Memo to: Mel Schrieberg, SpiralFrog CEO
Hey, Mel, nice service. Up until today.
Lemme tell you what happened. I found out about SpiralFrog a few weeks ago, played around with it for while (and went along with your silly survey). Then I spent a couple of days downloading music -- a whole lot of it.
Very cool, I thought. Download and listen to music, and then look at some ads in trade. Over the last few days, I listened to every downloaded cut and was delighted. I wanted everyone to know about a neat service, so I blogged it (see Free Music From SpiralFrog).
But this morning when I tried playing some SpiralFrog downloads, Windows Media Player took a step back -- no, it actually recoiled -- and said no way, I'm not touching that stuff. So none of the SpiralFrog music would play.
It turns out that WMP's Digital Rights Management file somehow got hosed. (No, I don't have a clue why, but I'm trying to find out.) So I was presented a SpiralFrog apology (see below) -- and advice to download everything again.
Media Usage Rights AcquisitionThere is a problem with the SpiralFrog song you are trying to play.
The most likely explanation is that during the download process the song did not acquire the necessary license to play. Our apologies, but in this event, your only recourse is to download the song again. Please click here to go to the Home page of SpiralFrog.
I don't think so, and in fact, I've just removed SpiralFrog from my Favorites and uninstalled their downloading program.
So here's the deal, Mel. When SpiralFrog gets their act together and finds a way for me to recoup from a DRM error, I'll start downloading music. I'll even take the survey again and look at your ads. But until then, I'll stick with LaLa for my online music needs.
Talkback
Have something to say? You can use Comments below or if you'd prefer, fire an e-mail right into my inbox.
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There is a fix to this. Unfortunately what you experienced can happen when the WMP license store gets corrupted and then refuses to play any DRM-protected songs. The good news is that there is a fix to this that does not require you to re-download the songs - reset the WMP license store and ask us to help recover the licenses via our “contact us” tab in the Help section (re-downloading won’t work in this case if the license store is corrupt).
This is a WMP problem that happens infrequently and we don’t have any control over – if the WMP license store is corrupted, the user will need to reset it first which we can’t do remotely. Given your feedback, we will be changing the error messaging that you saw to point you directly to the fix.
Thanks in advance for making your readers aware of the problem and, now, the solution.
Your Friends at SpiralFrog
I have been using Spiral Frog for several weeks no without any problems other than occassionally their servers are jammed and I cannot download. In addition I have yet to see an ad that I have to read.
Your Uncledudly
Steve, my only regret is that I did not tell you so, and therefore cannot say I did.
Seriously though, this is exactly why I shun DRMed stuff, especially when it comes to Windows Media. It's just too capricious. Yes, there are fixes, as has been pointed out above. But there aren't always fixes, and not everyone uses the same system for their DRMed music files. Why should I have to keep track of what my various restrictions are, depending on where I bought a given track? No thanks.
Yeah. I've been thru that. Have yet to find a solution to reauthorize the files. Sent spiralfrog a bunch of emails feedback@spiralfrog.com and I guess that's their junk-mail address because they dont help there. Maybe they're backlogged on emails, or maybe it's all a joke on me, HAHA spiral frog - tricked me into emailing you for help when it's a junk bin. Joke's on me! *WORTHLESS SITE, DRM, LICENSES*
I have a fix for vista reinstall the spiralfrog download manager,