Peter Gabriel Intros Ad-Supported Free Music Service
May 1st, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: Digital Music 
Rock legend Peter Gabriel, with partners Steve Purdham and John Taysom, have introduced a new free music supported by personalized advertising messages.
The We7 service works by dynamically ‘grafting’ ads onto the front of music tracks and albums based on a consumer’s demographics such as location, age, gender and could even be extended to preferences.
All We7 music is DRM free so consumers can legally share and play tracks on any MP3 player, expanding the potential for advertisers to reach even more people as content gets shared. The ‘grafted’ ads change on sharing to match the listener.
“We7 provides artists – even across the more experimental or minority genres – with the opportunity to build a new source of income from their music,” said Peter Gabriel, Musician and Founder Investor. “Ad funded downloads are the way to provide free music to the consumer without depriving musicians of their livelihood.”
“We7 offers a platform to entertain and engage, benefiting both the consumer and the advertiser,” according to Steve Purdham, CEO. “Our advertising model creates an entirely new category of highly targeted, high value, advertising inventory, combining all the benefits of an engaging broadcast campaign with the speed and effectiveness of digital.”
Source: We7
Great : Advertising you can’t get rid of. Wonderful : Advertising on your ipod. I’d rather be a poor musician than attatch a comercial onto my album. Can you imagine, Listening to Pet Sounds and suddenly there is a Nike commercial? Gross.
Hey guys, I got to this article from MarketingVox, which is one of the leading online marketing rags. Congratulations on getting picked up by one of the biggest names in my little world!
John
Good to hear from you and thanks for the info.
I’m not so sure I like the idea of ad-supported tunes, though!
If you read on in the We7 site, then you can find out that there’d be a choice between purchasing the track for the normal price or having an ad on the track that would go away after a period of time. So, the artist either gets their money the logical way by normal buying or by the consumer taking the song for free to listen to about 25 advertisements. I think it’s smart (and i’m sure people would find loopholes to the system to make the ads leave the song quicker anyways)