SpiralFrog had almost seemed to disappear from the scene, as there had been little information coming out on where things were at with the ad-supported music and video web site.
That has finally changed as the company announced it is increasing its "beta" test over the next several weeks.
Founder of SpiralFrog Joe Mohen said the company recently enlisted a number of testers in North America to see how it resonates with users.
"We're really testing the user experience to make sure it satisfies the needs of demanding young consumers," Mohen said.
The licensing deal with Universal Music Group and Broadcast Music Inc. put the company in the limelight, but their over-enthusiastic goal of launching in early 2007 was scuttled. They also had internal problems, as they removed the CEO at that time - Robin Kent.
Mohen said most of the delay was related to the detailed process of working out the deal for rights with the music publishers, who reportedly will get 10 percent of ad revenues. There were also tech issues related to bandwidth and data storage expansion.
In the beta testing stage, the company has around 700,000 tracks available. SpiralFrog hopes to have about 1.5 million at the time of the North American launch.
The downloads will be free, but users will have to log in once a month to get continue access to the content. There will be copyright protections included with the service, but they will be able to be played on a large number of digital music players.
Unfortunately, the iPod or Apple (AAPL) Macintosh computers won't be one of them.
The company says it should be ready for launch in North America by the end of they year.
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