Once the poster child for advertising-supported music - particularly when the industry was desperate for something not a) pirated or b) run by Apple - it is finally the end of the road for SpiralFrog.
It croaked it at midnight last night, only to be replaced by a rather charmless 404.
A dead frog. Photograph: A of DooM/Flickr/Some rights reserved
SpiralFrog reached the grand old age of five before being forced to pull the plug; it had received $12m in funding to date but its creditors, mostly hedge funds who accounted or three quarters of that, weren't convinced and moved to seize its assets.
As well as debt, the site had struggled with a lack of consumer interest, and though it signed a distribution deal with Universal in 2006, EMI did not sign until June last year and the biggest two labels in listening terms - Sony and Warner - never signed at all.
A source close to SpiralFrog told CNET the company was victim of a "macro-economic perfect storm" - the combination of a the collapse in capital markets and in advertising.
