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News
iTunes Competitor SpiralFrog Goes Under
Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 8:01 AM - by Jeff Gamet
Apple's iTunes Store has one less potential competitor now that the ad-based SpiralFrog has shut down. The online music service's Web site went offline sometime on Thursday afternoon without any warning, and it looks like the company's offices shut down, too.
There hasn't been any official word of the shutdown from SpiralFrog, but an unnamed source that's close to the company told CNET that it has ceased operations and gave its assets to creditors.
SpiralFrog offered music for free and sold advertising to pay royalties. The company briefly looked like it might have a chance at success when Universal Music and EMI began offering their libraries through the service.
Music at the Web site was, however, encoded in Microsoft's WMA format with a copy protection scheme that prevented the music from playing on a Mac, iPod or iPhone, potentially cutting out a large revenue source. The copy protection also blocked burning songs to CD, and required subscribers to log into their online account at least once a month to view ads to avoid having their downloaded music lock and become unplayable.
SpiralFrog's demise is just another in a long list of companies that have tried to show that subscription-based music services are viable but failed. So far, purchase-style services -- like the iTunes Store and Amazon -- seem to be the only digital music business model that has any staying power.
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