Ad-Supported Free Music Downloads Doomed to Failure?

madonna writes "CNET extensively explains why the new We7.com download service — which offers ad-embedded free music downloads without DRM — is doomed to failure. 'This service absolutely, categorically will not succeed. You can quote us on that. It's true the best way to combat piracy is to provide a realistic and affordable alternative, and free is certainly affordable. But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service that costs the same as using BitTorrent or Limewire, but comes with abominable disclaimers or advertisements.'"

Re:Depends on the catalog

[NorQue]

Personally I wouldn't mind paying 3-4 EUR for a movie *without* ads in the beginning. You can get most movies little time after the release for 2-3 EUR more already, why should I waste my precious time just to save very little money? It'd also be naive to assume that you'll be able to skip these ads.

"Costs the same"???

[pla]

But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service that costs the same as using BitTorrent or Limewire, but comes with abominable disclaimers or advertisements.

I don't know about the FP author, but I consider "legal" a pretty big point to factor into "cost"!

And I say that as someone who loathes ads.

Why not

[neonv]

But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service that costs more than BitTorrent or Limewire, and comes with abominable DRM ...

It's legal, free, and easy to use. There's three good reasons to switch.

It isn't compleatly doomed to failure

[apathy maybe]

Because there will always be those who wish to stay one the "right side of the law" (for whatever reason). However, considering it would be incredibly easy to remove ads from either the start or the end of a song, or if embedded in an album to separate the tracks, it will just provide another way for people to get music.

I don't think they can make any money of the service, so OK I guess it is doomed to failure.

Personally, I've been listening to ad free (varied full tracks, including big name bands) music legally for a few weeks from Last.fm and I'm quite happy.

In my day....

[History's Coming To]

Hmmm....interesting concept....you listen to tunes which have commercial messages attached. They might even put the ads over the first or last few seconds to avoid ruining the entire track, but still have the ads embedded.

In my day we called that "commercial radio".

Been done before

[david.given]

I remember this from amp3.com, a defunct and unlamented mp3.com clone.

I've still got a couple of tracks somewhere with the amp3.com ad header on them; however, it turned out that they had stuck the header on by directly fiddling with the mp3 stream, and simply by running the file through a mp3 sanitiser, the header would magically vanish.

I wish we7 lots of luck, but if I were to start using them I'd damn well write an ad removal program.

Flawed Analysis

[malsdavis]

By the article author's calculations, all paid music services are doomed to failure, not just free ad-supported ones.

From TFA:
"don't waste your time in thinking this is going to do anything positive to the industry"

I've heard that so many times about services which have actually revolutionised industries, many of those services are no longer in business but that didn't stop them being positive influences on the industry.

Case in point: A few years ago in the U.K., Altavista advertised an flat-rate, £10 a year internet service at a time when virtually all domestic ISPs only offered per-minute deals. Several other ISPs then started offering competing flat-rate offers.

The Altavista service never even ended up launching, but it had already caused other ISPs to offer cheap flat-rate deals. As a result, Altavista are often credited with helping to give the U.K. some of the cheapest internet deals in the world.

Maybe this service won't be a massive hit, but to instantly dismiss an innovative idea is extremely stupid!

Doomed to Failure?

[minotaurcomputing]

"But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service that costs the same as using BitTorrent or Limewire, but comes with abominable disclaimers or advertisements."

Broadcast radio has followed this model since the beginning and it didn't hurt them until "commercial-free" paid services came on the scenes. What would have probably been better for the record industry is the inclusion of ads in songs and albums from the early days of records. That way they could have now charged a premium for ad-free music and made a killing. Ahhhh, but hindsight is 20x20.

-m

Re:Big Surprise

[ackthpt]

People don't like listening to ads before listening to music? Shock and awe.

Tell it brother!

I have DVDs which are years old and they still play these gawddam previews for upcoming films of years past. I'm ticked because my DVD player gives me guff when I try to fast forward, skip chapter or go directly to the menu, with the circle with a slash through it stating such behaviour is vorboten. I must sit like a good little monkey and watch whatever shite they deemed necessary prior to enjoying the content I shelled many quid for, however many times I want to watch the films.

Come to think of it, it's a very strong argument in favour of ripping, editing and burning your own videos to get around this abhorent behaviour.

Now if they think I need to listen to the Coke or some sports figure hawking the latest rubber shoe straight outta China before I can listen to my toonz, they can forget it.

Pot meet kettle

[gsn]

cnet is really one to talk. You had to suffer through ads before every single video clip on their site. Sometimes their ads are longer than their video reviews (only useful to get some indication of size).

Sure ads are annoying but music is good and free music is better. If not just pay for it. You can you know. cnet might have learnt that if they even tried looking at the bloody frontpage http://www.we7.com/ [we7.com]

At We7, we know that ads are not always desirable, so as with everything in life it's a balance and We7 will give you a choice.

        * If you want a track now with no ad, then we will give you a way to buy the track at normal price.
        * If you want a track that is free, legal, safe and the artist gets rewarded then we add the ad. However, you don't have to have the ad forever, as with We7 technology, after a period of time (4 weeks) you will have the choice to have the track 'ad free'. So, enjoy We7 and the new digital music download model.

Oh right and as has already been pointed out if its DRM free I can simply strip out the first ten seconds or whatever.

Re:Notable advertising failures.

[griebels2]

Maybe it would be more interesting to see why they failed:

Ad cards bound into paperback books. That was tried in the 1980s, and customers were so angry publishers stopped that, and it didn't come back.

Is this because the people that received those books already paid for them? For most people, books are things to stay, things to collect and having ads in them destroys the perception of value.

Ads during telephone ring. Yes, little blipverts between each ring. Tried around 2000. That came and went so fast few ever heard one.

If I'm paying for this call per minute, I'm not going to forgive anybody trying to get a cent extra out of me by pushing advertisements to me.

Fast food table clutter. Little stand-up things with ads on every table. The fast food industry has mostly backed off from that since the 1990s; not many sales and too much hassle.

You still see them in almost any Burger King restaurant I know of. Altough they seem to contain mostly propaganda for their own brand.

The big one - sound trucks. 1930s idea, around the time amplifiers started really working. Trucks driving around blaring ads. That was so obnoxious it was made a criminal offense in most US states.

I'm not asking for this sound truck to drive trough my street. Most advertisement can be easily avoided if you don't want to be hit by it. You can switch off your TV, not visit that spammy web site, etc. You cannot just turn off this sound truck. This is also why e-mail spam is becomming increasingly illegal in countries all over the world.

To be honest, I don't see any reason why advertising-based music downloads are not going to work. Commercial radio and TV has an abundance of advertising, yet those forms of media are still quite viable. User-acceptance will rely on how easy this service is to use and how many artificial limitations there will be (like downloading a maximum of 5 songs/hour/day/from the same artist).

The question I have is whether or not advertisers are really getting any real advantage out of those advertisements. So I think the gamble will be more on advertiser-acceptance than on user-acceptance.

Re:Morality is hard to define

[Anonymous Coward]

What are your "interests", exactly? You'll be dust in 100 years anyway... why not speed up the process a little?

If you're like most advanced organisms on this planet, your "interests" are mostly shared with those of your species. If you don't want to call that "morality", you're just playing dumb.

This applies only to commercial crap

[Morgaine]

I stopped listening to commercial music over a decade ago when it started to deliver crap instead of actual music. And I'm not the only one.

If you have a problem with DRM or with copyrights or with the RIAA or with the cost of music, it's your choice: you choose to listen to crap, and crap with strings attached is what you get.

There is 100 times as much music out there as is delivered by the mainstream western labels. Go find it, and enjoy. And when you choose to pay for something that you think is really terrific, you will be rewarding musicians, not shareholders.

It's your choice. You know how to Google.

Re:Morality is hard to define

[crabpeople]

The masses are not nessecarily morally correct just by virtue of their greater numbers. Plenty of societies had slaves and human sacrifice. The point you are trying to make that killing is immoral (I assume you mean in most circumstances not all) is a relatively new one. That all people are equal is even newer and certainly not ingrained in most of the worlds people. One could argue that we are genetically predisposed to kill different genetic lines in order for ours to have a better chance at succeeding.

I would have personally killed many people over my lifetime if there were no legal consequences in doing so. Just because the bible says "thou shalt not kill" and the west is primamrily judeo-christian, doesnt mean that everyone agrees with the dominant philosophy. I personally think that Jesus's morals were weak and that they make you weak. There are no universal "morals".

Re:Depends on the catalog

[Anonymous Coward]

if they can get any good artists.

--bingo.

Re:This applies only to commercial crap

[gstoddart]

I stopped listening to commercial music over a decade ago when it started to deliver crap instead of actual music. And I'm not the only one.

If you have a problem with DRM or with copyrights or with the RIAA or with the cost of music, it's your choice: you choose to listen to crap, and crap with strings attached is what you get.

The problem with the above, is that what defines 'crap' is purely subjective.

In my case, almost all forms of alt/grunge/punk/whatever that stem from Nirvana all the way down are, to my ears, unmitigated crap. Have been since day one. If all of your indie bands are making music of that genre, it's just more crap that isn't on major labels. Conversely, some of the stuff I listen to might be unmitigated crap to you. (Shocking as it might sound. ;-)

But, an indie version of Green Day doesn't interest me any more than the actual thing.

There is 100 times as much music out there as is delivered by the mainstream western labels. Go find it, and enjoy. And when you choose to pay for something that you think is really terrific, you will be rewarding musicians, not shareholders.

There's a lot of music which falls into that category, but it may not be possible for everyone to lay hands on it. Record stores (most of them) offer up way too much floorpsace for the mainstream stuff to be able to stock anything with any reliability -- that's because that is what will sell.

I listen to loads of stuff which is very far removed from mainstream. Unfortunately, the recording label is still a member of the RIAA, so it's not like you can get that far removed from it. Even if the artists basically say "go ahead, share our music with your friends", the RIAA might still decide to sue on behalf of them, and against their stated wishes.

Short of everyone going on some quest to wander about in the forest of lesser-known music, it's simply tough to find stuff which diverges from the mainstream. That, or you're ordering really obscure imports, or small runs from indie groups, or what have you.

And, really, you can't google for "find me some non-mainstream music I'll like".

In my case, my music collection is self perpetuating because I keep looking at stuff on the same recording label (Six Degrees) or from other artists I've found who are associated with some of the groups I've found. But, I'm nowhere near being able to find music I like without actually relying on an actual label who is, nonetheless, a member of the RIAA.

Cheers

Re:Morality is hard to define

[Laur]

Oh the golden rule can lead to some horrible abuses if you want to be treated in a way that is horrific to others. For example, you want to be heroically saved by doctors regardless of how much pain you are in.

I didn't say it was perfect, just that I hadn't yet found anything better. The golden rule is fantastic because it is simple and obvious, you can quickly determine a course of action, and live your life. For more complex scenarios, the golden rule may fall down, but in those cases you also usually have more time to mull it over. However, in your example case, I think the golden rule still works. Personally, I want people to respect my decisions, particularly regarding my own fate, and I believe that most people feel likewise. Therefore, if I was a doctor, and a patient had told me ahead of time that they do not want some specific procedure performed, even if it would otherwise mean death, then I believe it would be immoral for me to perform the procedure anyway against the patient's wishes. This is actually seen all the time in actual practice. Now, if it is an emergency situation and you have not had time to communicate with the patient ahead of time regarding their wishes, then you just have to use your best judgment, based on what you would want in that situation. Obviously, anytime you try to guess someone else's wishes it is fraught with peril (and potential lawsuits), which is why doctor's are usually ultra-conservative, and try to save the person's life, regardless of it's a good idea or if they would personally want that.

My morality is based on: Voluntary consent by an informed rational person.

My god, how do you ever get anything done? Are you constantly questioning people over the simplest things in order to get their consent? For example, how do you decide not to ram your cart into other people at the supermarket? Do you ask each and every person that you come to whether they would consent to a cart-ramming? Or do you instead make assumptions on what you think their answer will be, possibly based on what you yourself would want in similar circumstances (i.e. the golden rule)? For that matter, how do you decide that no-cart-ramming is preferable to cart-ramming? Is it again based on your own preferences? How in the world can you decided if someone else is "rational" and "informed"? Doesn't that preclude you from dealing with most people that you encounter? If you decided that someone is not rational or informed enough, do you go ahead and ram them with your cart? If not, why not? How else do you deal with those who are not rational or informed? Can you never do anything "nice" for them? How does your morality determine what is nice or not-nice (right and wrong)?

If you and another "rational, informed" person voluntarily consent that it is okay to throw rocks at squirrels for fun, does that make it moral?

If you don't have voluntary consent, you are probably doing evil to them.

Interesting assertion, do you have any arguments to back it up? What about the case where you need to do things without someone's consent in order to prevent harm to others? Is it moral for the government to collect taxes from its populace? Most people do not voluntarily consent to pay taxes, they do it under threat of severe penalties.

People are not really rational until a certain age.

And usually not even then (besides, who chooses what age?). Humans aren't rational, they are rationalizing. Can you prove to me that you are rational? At all times, on all subjects?

In the case of file infringing: You don't have the consent of the creator to hand out free copies to other people just because you bought one copy from them.

Under your morality, why do you even need the creator's consent? There seems to be an assumption on your part that the creator has more r