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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.'"
I think there's noth**Call Geico 1-800-861-8380 - So easy a cave man could do it**ing wrong with this business model
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.
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.
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.
I wank in the shower.
Music downloading types are like electrons. They always take the path of least resistance. You can charge for music downloads, and if it's super easy to do, people will pay it. But if you make the process even slightly more complicated, no one will touch it, even if it's free.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
If I wrote a program to cut off the first ten seconds (or whatever) of these songs, removing the ads, would that be legal or not?
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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".
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
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.
This negative review - of course - has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with CNET owning mp3.com does it?
I mean why would it? Must be a coincidence, surely...
At some point, ads get too intrusive. Some notable failures:
Besides, music already has ads. 50 Cent mentioned 20 brands in his songs in 2005, according to American Brandstand. "Mercedes emerged as the top brand of the year, and 50 Cent outbranded the rest to become the top brand-dropping artist... Meanwhile, weapon brands surged..."
Well, copyright infringement isn't theft, but neither is what the RIAA does (even less so, in fact!). So, what are you talking about?
PS: IANAPhilosopher, but as best as I can tell, morality doesn't exist.
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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!
"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
OK, let's stop calling this by the name Digital Rights Management. That's the name that the industry puts on it to cover their true purpose.
It's actually DENIAL of FAIR USE. DFU. Call it DFU. When you're explaining why it's DFU instead of the industry's pet name, just say "Disney Fucks U."
DFU. That's the framing which will help to change people's minds. Don't say DRM any longer. It's not about their rights, it's about OUR fair use rights as citizens.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Looks like you can DL the song, shelve it for a few weeks, then have it add free. Sounds good to me.
I hate ads, but I like free music. I can wait.
I just downloaded a song and am listening to it as I type (Coolio's Gangsta walk it was one of the first songs on the list).
- There's a 10 second ad clip in the beginning for We7. After that, the music starts.
- Half the song later, no second ad, just music.
- The music inexplicably stops 10 seconds before the song's done, but there's still no second ad.
I don't know how they make money off of advertising their own service in the beginning of the song. Does anyone have an answer for this? And couldn't anyone just download a song, then import it in an audio editor like Audacity, delete the 10 second ad in the beginning and export it back? A quick scan of the terms doesn't seem to prohibit that.
Going out and capping everyone I can find would violate my personal interests, none of which have to do with morality.
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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/ 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.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
http://www.mptrim.com/ There's a few other programs out there that can chop up mp3s without losing any quality. I downloaded a couple of mp3s from we7 and they only slap an ad on the beginning of the song, so it's easy to chop off if you don't want it.
My interests are defined by whatrever will increase my total happiness over the course of my life. Capping a bunch of people will not, thus, it does not serve my interest.
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In my day we called that "commercial radio".
I remember when commercial radio was like this... where you could passivly listen to music, 2-4 songs and then an equal amount of time was dedicated to commercials and dj jabber. Odds were you could hop stations if the commercial breaks really bothered you.
Now... I have a hard time crusing the FM dial without finding some radio station that hasn't been infiltrated by the "talk radio craze", which is some solo jackass with a string monologs lasting for 8 hours, not related to the music, but usually a cry of moral outrage over scented toilet paper followed by fart jokes.
I for one welcome our music serving commercial overlords... at least there is MUSIC.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I'm stuck. Use DVDdecryptor & DVDshrink to remove all the annoyances & re-burn to a blank DVD. Yes, it's a bit of work, but yields a far superior product.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
I'm not going to download one to find out, but how the heck do you pronounce "we7"?
... Bueller?
Is that "wee-seven"? Or do they try to amalgamate the words into "weven" or something?
Who here thinks that having a short URL was a key part of their plan to get venture capital...? (Raises hand) Who thinks this will save them...? Anybody?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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 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?
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.
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?
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
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx