Sandoval, Greg. "What's the real cost of free music?" CNET 23 Mar 2009 1-3. 5 Apr 2009. <http://news.cnet.com/whats-the-real-cost-of-free-music/?part=rss>.

Greg Sandoval's article "What's the real cost of free music?" published on cnet.com discusses the death of free online music provider SprialFrog in March of 2009. Sandoval states that it was obvious that the service would not survive despite the good concept. Sandoval notes the prevalence of failure in the ad supported music service sector and the threat of going under lurking around every corner, as seen by the death of other services such as Rhapsody prior to SpiralFrog's demise. Although none of these ad supported music sites have yet to record any sort of profit, they have required quite a bit of funding to start and support. Additionally, Sandoval argues, the advertising market of today is "crumbling" and has not provided sufficient support for these sites to survive.
While radio is still a very prevalent source of music discovery, Sandoval notes that ad supported sites must pay a lot to license the music and make it free to users. While the intention of these sites is to boost and support sales, Sandoval notes that the sites are, in fact, replacing sales. Thus, as the record labels are losing sales to these free music sites, the industry is requesting that the sites increase their licensing fees to cover the costs of the lost sales. Finally, Sandoval argues that ad supported sites must adjust their model to encompass social networking sites, which are capable of amplifying the word of mouth necessary to spread the buzz about music and various ad-supported sites.
This article is relevant to my paper topic because the author discusses how changes in the landscape of new media and the recording industry and restructuring themselves according to consumer needs. Sandoval takes the failure of SpiralFrog and demonstrates how the structure of the ad supported music site is not an adequate model to produce any sort of profit. In the future of the music industry, ad supported sites will most likely not produce enough revenue to support the artists and executives of the record label but could, if linked, as Sandoval suggests, with social networking sites, provide the best possible model for advertising and popularizing new music.