4th
Free Music From We7
Since Pandora won’t let me listen to music any more (because I’m not located in the US), I thought I’d give We7 a try. Founded by musician Peter Gabriel and several other people with extensive experience in the field of both music and technology, it offers legal, free MP3’s to anybody who wants them.
The way it’s suppoed to work is, they add a short ad at the beginning of the MP3 file. You listen to the ad, then you listen to the song. And the really cool part is that after you’ve downloaded and listened to the ad-supported version for a month, they figure you’ve “paid” for that song, and you can download an ad-free version of the same song.
They’ve just launched, so at the moment, the pickings are slim. A few songs, by a few artists — including Dave Matthews, Coolio, and Bananarama.
I’ll give it a try, and I’ll be watching to see if this catches on. If it does, it might end up being a good thing for everybody involved — the listeners, the advertisers, and the musicians.
