Music startups sure don’t seem to have it easy these days. Lawsuit after lawsuit is raining down on some of them, and legal threats, fierce competition but evidently also the economic downturn and the decline in digital advertising spending is forcing some companies to shut down altogether. The latest company to suffer that fate is venture capital-backed SpiralFrog, which quietly hit the deadpool… → Read More
After less than a year in operation, the team at Anywhere.FM reached an early payday today when veteran social music service Imeem gobbled them up for an undisclosed sum, most likely in a cash and stock mix. The iTunes-style web music player had raised under $100,000 in financing from Y Combinator and angels, making an early exit likely below $5 million possible. Anywhere.FM with its 60,000 users… → Read More
SpiralFrog has just announced the site is up to over 1 million uniques each month and expected to end this month with over 1.2 million uniques. SpiralFrog, for those of you who don’t remember, is the free (as in ad supported, not P2P) legal music service that unlocks over 1 million songs to their users as long as they log back in to their site at least once every month (an easy task if you… → Read More
Remember SpiralFrog that free music download service that announced itself nearly a year ago? Well, after slowly releasing invites to Canadians, we received a private beta invitation. SpiralFrog originally made a splash when they sealed a deal with Universal BMG to give away free downloads of some of their songs in exchange for a share of on-site ad revenue. Later they closed a deal with EMI and… → Read More
EMI Music Publishing is announcing tonight that they are partnering with New York startup SpiralFrog to distribute music for free download. SpiralFrog hit the news late last month with their groundbreaking partnership with Universal to distribute music for free (see our coverage for more details). Universal appears set to buy BMG (the non Sony half of Sony-BMG) for roughly $2 billion in the next… → Read More
Well it was bound to happen, the big labels are starting to see the light. Universal announced plans today to offer its entire catalog of music for free through a startup service called SpiralFrog. The project is supported entirely by ads. Users of SpiralFrog will be able to load its proprietary software and play Universal songs in Windows Media Player and on two portable devices, the iPod is not… → Read More
If you’re familiar with this story, see the updated details at the end. Universal Music, the corporate parent behind labels like MoTown, Geffen Records and many more, announced this morning that they will be making their entire catalogue available for free download through New York based startup SpiralFrog.com starting this fall. SpiralFrog will offer free downloads wrapped in a still… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
