MidemNet 2008: Don't hold your breath for SpiralFrog in the UK : Tech Digest

We've written about SpiralFrog before: it's an ad-funded music service that gives you free tunes in exchange for you seeing some ads while they download to your PC. So far, it's only available in the US and Canada. And it seems it'll stay that way for a while, judging by VP Matthew Stern's comments at the MidemNet conference.

"We’re not going in unless we have licenses. That’s why we’re here; we’re talking to people. The most difficult part is the publishing aspect. In Canada, it’s easy; in the States, there’s 30,000-odd publishers; in the EU, is there going to be a body that covers everything? If not, we go region-by-region, territory-by-territory."

The real question is whether SpiralFrog will have the legs to get to that point, given that it's burning money like it's going out of fashion (the company posted losses of $3.4 million in the third quarter of last year alone). Still, the company looks to be in better shape than its rival Qtrax, whose launch this week was something of a disaster.

SpiralFrog website (via PaidContent)