Six months ago Spiral Frog burst onto the digital music scene, and straight onto the front page of the Financial Times, with its promise to deliver completely free online music downloads that would be funded entirely by advertising. Now it seems that the business is perilously close to collapse as a result of serious internal conflicts between the company’s board and senior management, and its chairman Joe Mohen.
In December, Mohen apparently fired his CEO Robin Kent, the former chairman and CEO of ad firm Universal McCann along with a number of other senior staff. Then several of the key board members quit, apparently in support of their sacked CEO. The future for the business now looks uncertain, although Spiral Frog says it will still launch as before, albeit in Canada first, rather than the US.