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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.

 

5 comments from the community.

You can post your own below.

jimothy said:

March 20th, 2009 at 8:43 AM

The sad thing about them going out of business is that this news has increased their brand awareness?from 0.1% to 0.3%.

   Quote

cramar said:

March 20th, 2009 at 10:39 AM

Never heard of ‘em before.

   Quote

mactoid said:

March 20th, 2009 at 11:20 AM

It occurs to me that their business model “SpiralFrog offered music for free and sold advertising to pay royalties” is essentially the same business model of AM radio in the 60’s and 70’s, albeit with a different broadcast medium.  Maybe their problem is that they were just a few decades late….

   Quote

vanax said:

March 20th, 2009 at 12:04 PM

Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the reminder of the existence of these draconian schemes/technologies.

No one but developers seem to like WMA. Is MS paying them to use it or what? If so, sounds, ahh…socialistic to me which, if true, it’s a bad thing according to Rightwingers.

Regarding the “copy protection scheme that prevented the music from playing on a Mac, iPod or iPhone…,” yeah, why would a company cut off itself from the most popular and the most frequently used single source of revenue? It does not make business sense. Self-limiting business schemes may indicate a wish to fail.

And if you can’t burn songs to a CD, a method to back up what you already own (in my opinion), well, you are limiting your options. Who wants that?

The mandatory requirement to “...log into the online account at least once a month…” is too much. Wow. And then for having the “downloaded music lock and become unplayable” if you don’t, seems so out of touch with current expectations that the company really must have depended on DUMCA or MS subsities to remain alive or else it had a form of a death wish.

From what you say, it did quite a lot to assure the prevention of success, hence to precipitate its own demise. But, as to its visibility, Cramer, I too have never heard of this company.

   Quote

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