MIDEM 2008: SpiralFrog battles on

There must be something in the air in France at the moment - a few days after that bloke kept throwing money down the corporate toilet at Societe Generale, up at MIDEM pitches SpiralFrog, to throw some more of their good money after bad. Like Jack Duckworth at the bookies, they're convinced that this is the time they're going to win big.

Vice President Matthew Stern tells PaidContent they're having good times:

SpiralFrog has added another 30,000 registered members since Jan. 24, when it announced it had reached 400,000. It’s grown from 800,000 tracks at its September 17 launch to 1,030,000 tracks, “so our growth ingestion has been very positive ... we’re adding thousands of tracks a week ... this month, we’re on track for our target of 1.2 million.”

If the figures for sign-up are correct, that's quite impressive. Less impressive, though, is how much use those members get out of the service:

He said the service is averaging about 10 minutes engagement per user.

Ten minutes? That suggests that people are signing up, trying out... and then heading off. Who listens to music for ten minutes? A music service which manages to hold attention for less time than most men spend picking the dirt out from between their toes of a morning doesn't sound like it's that compelling - especially when it's hoping to sell advertising to fund itself.

[Part of MIDEM 2008]