From the who-is-going-to-get-canned-for-this-idea dept:

Universal Music to Offer Free Downloads

Music fans for years have been telling record labels what they want to pay for downloaded songs: nothing.

Now the labels are starting to agree that free might work for them too.

Universal Music Group announced Tuesday that it would license its digital catalog to a website offering free legal downloads. The two-year deal marks a significant shift in an industry long criticized for fighting, rather than harnessing, the Internet's potential.

The new website, backed by New York company SpiralFrog, hopes to make money selling advertisements that play while songs download.

The "catch" is you have to watch a 90 second ad to get the "free" music then you have to watch more ads to keep it. Longer commercial views will get you the videos.

90 seconds is also about the amount of time it will take a script kiddie to write a few lines of bunnyscript to download the videos while he's in class and the commercials play to an empty dorm room. Then Universial will be "Shocked" just "Shocked" they were ripped off.