SpiralFrog’s Free Music Site Disappoints

SpiralFrog is a free music web service that could have been great. The premise is to give visitors access to music for free that they may download in exchange for watching ads. It’s the broadcast radio model brought to the internet. So why, after two days out of beta testing, does the whole thing feel like a swindle?

The first problem is the organization of the site. One can look up music and video by genre, artist, album, new releases, etc. So far, so good. Someone at SpiralFrog, though, doesn’t understand how to alphabetize properly. If the band’s name starts with “The,” the band is listed under “T.” That is wrong. “The,” “A” and “An” are omitted and just because computer word processors don't know that is a lousy reason to file The Damned, The Jam and The Rolling Stones all under “T.” “St.” is not spelled out as “Saint,” “Dr.” should be treated as “Doctor,” and “Mc” is supposed to be treated as “Mac.”

Next, when one does a search, there is absolutely no clue that it has been completed because the search results are shown below the bottom of the screen. One must scroll down. If the search doesn’t turn up what one wants, scrolling back up is required for a new search. It is clumsy, and it is inelegant. Above all, it is frustrating.

Then, it’s slow. This may just be because of the media buzz and a high volume of visitors. That said, after two days, not a single tune has successfully downloaded onto this machine, which is connected to the internet by a T3 line. Error messages or a hung up browser have been the only results. That and the ads are the only proof that anything happened at all. God help the DSL user. If a song ever gets downloaded, one can’t burn it to CD or use it on an iPod. A different MP3 player will work, but that’s a huge chunk of the market to give up.

SpiralFrog needs to go back into Beta testing and come out when it’s ready. The potential is there, and demand is there, but this current version is nowhere.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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