Would be iTunes slayer SpiralFrog is road kill
Tried connecting to the SpiralFrog homepage in recent days? Heh, good luck with that as the would be iTunes killer™ has gone dark and current subscribers will likely be cut off in 60 days.
Baltimore Sun reports that ad-supported music site SpiralFrog shut down Friday just shy of 18 months after it launched. Whereas music schlepped by the site was toued “free,” users could not burn it to disc or even play it on their iPods, dooming the service to irrelevance.
A delicious irony of SpiralFrog’s folly is that it used Microsoft’s PlaysForSure digital rights management (DRM), which itself has been discontinued by the Redmond-based software giant. As such, SpiralFrog music would only play on WMA-compatible players that are increasingly an afterthought in the iPod dominated mp3 player market.
For SpiralFrog investors, the bad news doesn’t end here however. According to News.com as the erstwhile music site owes $34 million, well in excess of its assets, creditors won’t be paid in full and investors won’t get anything.
Yet another example of “pay forever music” has died—good riddance to bad rubbish.
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Filed under: Music, iPhone, iPod
