Andre Yoskowitz
21 Mar 2009 11:25
In September of 2007, the advertisement supported free music download site SpiralFrog debuted with 700,000 songs available , including the entire Universal catalog. In June of 2008, the service added more music, this time from the EMI catalog, putting available tracks at over 2 million.
Today, that service has shut down, leaving all users who purchased any music with 60 days to play their DRM-crippled tunes before they disappear.
SpiralFrog was once dubbed a possible "iTunes Killer," but financial issues and an executive shakeup shook many consumer's confidence in the company.
At the time, the service was one of very few that allowed users to listen to music for free but since then much bigger companies have made similar services available, including MySpace, Last.fm from CBS and imeem. Also notably, the behemoth video sharing site YouTube shows music videos, for free, from three of the Big 4 labels.
The difference is of course, that SpiralFrog offered downloads whereas the other services offer streaming, but SpiralFrog downloads did not have iPod support so there is arguably no difference.