Tagged: spiralfrog

It seems we can't go through a couple of months without news of QTrax 'launching' , or relaunching, or preparing to relaunch its launch. Since the last time it launched when it didn't actually launch, similar-but-actually-working service SpiralFrog has thrown in the towel. Is QTrax worried that SpiralFrog had all those months advantage and still flopped? But Qtrax maintains its business model is different than SpiralFrog's. The former CEO of SpiralFrog - Robin Kent, who left the company a year before it went under - serves as an advisor for Qtrax. You see? [...]

SpiralFrog—the ad-supported music service that turned into pattes de grenouilles last week—blew through more than $34 million dollars during its threeish-year run, according to a letter sent to investors saying that they wouldn't be seeing any money because of a loan exceeding that amount that has to be paid back to people who were smart enough to demand that the loans they doled out be deemed "secured." Man, all that money, and they couldn't even hire one person who would have the smarts to say "hey, this is kind of a dumb name that will probably cause us [...]

The site for ad-supported music download site Spiralfrog went dark yesterday afternoon; CNET reports that the firm was unable to repay its creditors, and those creditors have seized the firm's assets. Never really a huge player in the music download universe due to the fact that it only provided tracks in Windows Media format, Spiralfrog had agreements with three of the major label groups — Warner, Universal and EMI, but never actually featured downloads from Warner or EMI artists, due to the fact that these agreements were with the labels' publishing divisions. Spiralfrog never made arrangements with them [...]

Given that I'd bet a George Michael paycheck that you've probably forgotten it even existed, the rumours of Spiralfrog's closure will probably be more surprising that they hadn't packed up ages ago. You'd have to think that Spotify - a similar idea, only done right - would have been another nail in an already fairly well secured coffin lid.

"The best things in life are free." In the case of mp3s, this is not always true. Even if it were, finding free and legal mp3s is not the de rigeur method of retrieving new music. That honor goes to torrents, random blogs, message boards, forums, manila mailers from PR firms and record labels, iTunes gift cards, eMusic giveaways ... and so on. But there is another way. In fact, there are several. [...]

For all the excitement surrounding new ideas about digital music, there's rarely any follow-up on those concepts. Sure, we'll get some breathless posts about some great new system for sharing songs or listening to streams, but if it fails, or does only OK, that doesn't get quite the same amount of coverage. (Unless, of course, it gets sued, at which point it's a cause célèbre.) So it's nice to see CNet try to give a once-over to some recent new-media music startups and assess their fortunes . Unfortunately, it doesn't really do much digging. The [...]

Is the weak economy a good or bad thing for ad-supported music? Free ad-supported music download service SpiralFrog is now offering more than three million songs - four times the amount offered a year ago at launch. Music videos for download also increased to almost 5000 and registered users have grown to 2.3 million according to the company. SprialFrog believes this is the largest total number of registered users on any legal, free music download site, but offered no details as to how active the users are. According [...]

A note to whoever put together the "35 Places To Download Free, Legal MP3s" listicle I just found on DownloadSquad: I get it. Your readers are a bunch of mouth-breathing brats who want nothing more than to satiate their seemingly endless appetite for music without actually making an effort to obtain that music beyond right-clicking, and maybe having a wank over the greatness of Trent Reznor from time to time. And you need to cater to, and occasionally pander to, those tendencies. Fine. That's the world we live in now, for better or worse. But. [...]

About a year ago, the music industry started toasting a whole new model - advertising supported free legal downloads. The figurehead for this brave new world was SpiralFrog. Soon, it was predicted, we'd all be filling our mp3 players with SpiralFrogged tunes. It's been a bit quiet since then, although not so quiet at the SpiralFrog offices: CEO Robin Kent was kicked out over the holidays ; three other directors marched out in protest. The proposed launch late late year obviously didn't happen, but now there are vague mutterings of a launch sometime next [...]

Don't you hate Spiralfrog as a name for that free download service thingy? It's so clearly been arrived at by a team of New York advertising executives who think they're hip it's surprising that it doesn't have a pair of Olivers Peoples glasses perched on it. Anyway, their "listen to 90 seconds of advertising and then hear a song for free" offering has expanded today to include the EMI catalogue . EMI are puffed-up like little sparrows: "We are very pleased to help launch Spiralfrog," said Roger Faxon, co-chief executive of [...]

Those silly record labels and their misguided attempts at giving the people what they want. From the Coolfer tip , more details on what looks to be a dead on arrival download service (DOADS?). This extracted from a KCRW interview with industry consultant Celia Hirschman: "Have the major labels finally caved to the notion that illegal downloading cannot be stopped? Is this the beginning of the end of the record business as we know it? Not at all. Rather, this is classic Record Business. Read the fine print of the [...]

This just in ( NYT ): A new online music company said today that it would make a huge catalog of songs from the world’s largest record company, the Universal Music Group, available for consumers to download free. The company, called SpiralFrog, said its intention was to wean music fans, especially young people, away from illegal downloads and pirate music sites by offering a legitimate source, supported by advertising instead of download fees. Free legitimate music..wh..wh..what?!? There must be a catch... SpiralFrog’s free [...]

Normally, when Microsoft discover a security hole in something like Internet Explorer, they'll get around to posting a fix online at some point. But with the appearance of Fair Use for Windows Media, a program which apparently strips the DRM out of Plays For Sure downloads, they're running around like sand salesmen at a fire convention trying to fix the hole. Meanwhile, a program claiming to strip the DRM out of iTunes files has also appeared online over the weekend. And, in a further developement, Universal Records have [...]

Normally, when Microsoft discover a security hole in something like Internet Explorer, they'll get around to posting a fix online at some point. But with the appearance of Fair Use for Windows Media, a program which apparently strips the DRM out of Plays For Sure downloads, they're running around like sand salesmen at a fire convention trying to fix the hole. Meanwhile, a program claiming to strip the DRM out of iTunes files has also appeared online over the weekend. And, in a further developement, Universal Records have [...]