Few cynics are as hardened as teenagers. Add the experience of growing up in Manhattan and the seen-it-all attitude comes with an extra helping of scorn.

Music-mad Simon loves American hardcore, Jamaican ska and punk and his computer hard drive is full of songs, most downloaded illegally from websites.
What the tech-savvy 15-year-old doesn't have is an iPod, or any intention of getting one. "I'm out doing stuff, talking to my friends. They don't have iPods either," Simon says. "Why do I need an iPod? The ageing hipsters with white headphones poking out of their ears are sad."

Apple Computer's wildly successful iPod dominates digital music in a way that Sony's tape-playing Walkman could have only dreamt about.

As a result, Apple's iTunes music store has become the leading music retailer on the internet, but five years after its launch, the iPod is starting to lose its sheen.

According to New York trend forecaster Zandl Group the iPod backlash has begun.

Zandl regularly surveys 2000 youngsters aged eight to 24 on a variety of topics including music tastes, clothes and techno products.

For the first time last month, the iPod started attracting negative comments. "There were complaints about the batteries dying after the warranty ends," Zandl's Carla Avruch says. "They are expensive. There's a lot of cynicism about that.

"The iTunes format is also attracting complaints. People can't easily transfer their music to other players.

"The iPod is still very popular but there are signs of a backlash."

It's not only teenage consumers who are looking for an alternative to the iPod. The music industry is also keen to see someone break Apple's hold on digital music.

That hold, along with the international expansion of iTunes, means Apple is now selling songs at the rate of about a billion a year.

In the eyes of the music companies, Apple has become an over-mighty retailer, demanding too much say in matters such as pricing.

In any case, the larger problem of piracy and illegal downloading has not gone away. The number of songs shared over peer-to-peer networks such as Bit Torrent, Lime Wire and Kazaa is much greater than the number sold legitimately on sites such as iTunes, Napster and the multitude of other online stores.

This creates an opportunity for a new approach to digital music. Last week a group of seasoned media industry executives, including Robin Kent, Lance Ford and Eric McClean, announced plans to create an advertising funded business that will offer music for free.

The quirky name they have chosen for the new service certainly makes it memorable, but can Spiral Frog make the leap from concept to viable business?

Ford, Spiral Frog's chief marketing officer, says: "The big dilemma for the music companies is stolen music. The ratio around the world is one paid-for track to 40 stolen. That's a bloody disaster for them. The industry loses hundreds of millions of dollars trying to outlaw piracy, and it's almost impossible to stop.

"If you talk to those who feel there's a genuine right to get music free, they say they're never going to pay for music. It's a very ideological decision."

The answer, Spiral Frog says, is to embrace reality and make music available for nothing, recouping the costs from advertisers and sharing revenue with the record labels.

"Advertisers are keen to reach those under-30 girls and guys, the centrepiece of whose life is music," Ford says.

"There's a flood of dollars, pounds and euros going from traditional media to the internet, but huge sites such as My Space and You Tube are only just figuring out how to accommodate advertising.

"The unedited nature of their content makes it difficult for advertisers to work with."

So there is Spiral Frog's ambition: to solve the problem of online music theft while making it easier for advertisers to reach a youthful audience that is deserting newspapers and television.

The company has secured an agreement with Universal Music to provide access to its huge catalogue, which includes tracks by the likes of Eminem, Scissor Sisters and 50 Cent.

One Universal insider, however, says Spiral Frog is "an interesting experiment" but anyone who compares it with iTunes "doesn't know what they're talking about".

"The average music consumer doesn't want to sit through a minute and a half of ads every time they want to get a track," he says.

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