Around this time last year, Spiralfrog created quite a media buzz when it announced that it was about to launch with free, ad-supported music downloads.  Following that, the company missed its December launch date, and the CEO and his exec team subsequently bailed out, leading pundits to proclaim it a dead duck.  

However, the duck was not dead -- it was merely comatose.  Spiralfrog has launched, and is now accessible to Canadian and United Statesian users.  So far, only Universal has signed on, providing a 700,000 song catalog -- which is fairly meager compared to other services.  Tracks are in Windows Media Audio format, which means they will not play on the ubiquitous Apple iPod.  As well, Spiralfrog has some fairly hefty digital rights management;  the subscription must be renewed every 30 days, and if it lapses past 60 days, the tracks will no longer play, although renewing the subscription after that time will reactivate them without requiring re-downloads.  The registration process is fairly quick, with minimal personal information and no credit card details required.  The download manager is small and unobtrusive, and on a test run, I hardly noticed the ads (don't tell Spiralfrog that, though).  

Spiralfrog is an interesting experiment.  There's a lot of shrieking going on about how music should be free, but on the other side of the coin, DRM is one of the most hated technologies to come along in recent memory.  It remains to be seen whether Spiralfrog can strike a delicate balance between the two.

Read more about the new site on the Spiralfrog FAQ page.