We've come a long way since Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica, spearheaded a movement to bring down illegal file-sharing through Napster. Napster has gone legit and struggled to gain a piece of the market Apple has dominated with iTunes. A la carte, paid downloads revolutionized the digital music movement. The circle seems to be nearly complete. Today, SpiralFrog announced it will offer Vivendi's Universal Music Group's catalog for free download.

SpiralFrog will use ads to support the site, and share the revenue from the ads with Universal. The business model seems to steal a page from Disney's Internet distribution of ABC television shows. Users will have to watch or listen to targeted ads in order to download the songs. The company said the service would be available later this year. — Brian Ward

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Technorati tags: music, spiralfrog, file sharing.