Can Peter Gabriel take on iTunes?

Last.fm to offer free, on-demand music streaming from all the big labels

Relative to the technology around it, the music industry moves at a glacial pace - which is why it's worth recording little announcements such as the one today that Peter Gabriel's digital download service We7 has received a further $6 million in venture funding.

We7 is one of relatively few sites to be exploring the ad-supported model for music downloads by virtue of a clever technology it developed which lets an advert be attached to the beginning of any song that is downloaded.

The idea is that when people download a track, an ad plays before they listen to it for a limited number of times - eight times for new songs, five for older ones - before disappearing, at which point the song can be enjoyed like any that has been bought on iTunes.

(In fact We7 - which went live in April last year - goes further. Its tracks are all DRM-free, meaning that they can be transferred from one place to another and played on any device.)

So far none of the majors have signed up, and the two biggest independents to dip their toes in the water have been cautious. (V2, home of Bloc Party, the Stereophonics, and Mercury Rev, has only made a limited portion of their catalogue available. Sanctuary - to be fair - has put forward Morrissey and the Charlatans among its offering.)

But the new round of funding - led by Spark Capital, the Boston-based venture group who also backed the Veoh, the online distribution system, and Gabriel himself - should give the site and its 90,000 users a filip. (In eight and a half months, the number of tracks available has grown from 80,000 to half a million, and the site recently celebrated its millionth download.)

The prospect for advertisers is clear: like Facebook, We7 promises that its ads will be closely targeted because of the personal information it gathers about its users when they register. The labels, meanwhile, are reassured - hopefully - that they will begin to lose less through illegal downloading by virtue of a certain class of downloader returning to the fold: namely, one who doesn't mind having to listen to the odd ad, but who basically wants his or her music to be free.

All that remains is for a major - and ideally a few - to come on board.

By one view, We7 doing a deal with Sony or EMI is a pipe dream. The main battle at the moment in digital downloads is between iTunes and Amazon over which of them can offer tracks without DRM - a development music fans have long lobbied for. iTunes, Apple's music store, is still by far the dominant player but so far only EMI's tracks can bought DRM-free on iTunes. Amazon, on the other hand, has signed on all four majors to offer their songs without copy protection.

On the other hand, the labels' long-held disgruntlement with Apple over the cut it takes may spill over into the embrace of new models. Universal, for instance, has backed another ad-supported site, Spiralfrog, and EMI, which was bought by the private equity firm Terra Firma in August, is re-evulating its digital strategy.

We7's best bet is to be lobbying the majors really, really hard. ("Increasing the size of the music content," was one of the ways the new cash would be spent, the site said.) Much as We7's objective may be laudable, however, the industry's track record of resisting change - much to its peril, in the case of technological change - suggests Mr Gabriel and his team shouldn't be holding their breath.

Comments

[Mike]

I had no idea that Peter Gabriel, whose music is very album oriented, and who has always seemed very intent on musical quality, was supporting an ad-based mp3 service. It seems paradoxical, somehow; like being a traitor to your own cause. What an absolutely awful way of selling music! An ad before every song!? That's like having an ad play every time you pick a grape off the bunch, or every time you open the bottle for a dram... It's not surprising the idea receives venture funding, but let's hope it fails.

[Steve R]

Somehow or other recorded music has to be paid for, unless you plan on stealing it (known to those that do as 'file-sharing').

Good for Peter Gabriel on trying something different. I think I'll give it a go. As a fan of Gabriel and an admirer of the things he's done in the past (going back to free flexidiscs of Genesis music with the programme of the 1973 tour) I think this at least deserves to be tried out.

After all, every free-to-air TV program is preceded by advertising. So why not music downloads?

[Mark]

I think it is an interesting idea and don't forget that the advert is only there for the first 5-8 listens and then it's yours, advert free.

I love music and always purchase my albums, but sometimes lack of funds stop me from experimenting with new artists, so I think this could be a great way to allow just that.

I think what Peter is doing is great and although Mike is right Peter has always been album orientated and produced high quality music. He is noticing that times are changing in the music industry and the problem with piracy is never going to go away. At least he is trying something new and what has to be at least a much better way forward than DRM!

Good on ya Peter!

[José Tavares]

>>What an absolutely awful way of selling music! An ad before every song!?<<

This guy missed all of the news, Gabriel is not selling, he's offering! The only thing he sell's is England...and by the Pound, with no ad's ;)

[Rio]

"What an absolutely awful way of selling music! An ad before every song!?"

you didin't read the rest of the article, did you? it's from 5 to 8 times the ad gets played..

[Joe]

Love Peter, hate ads. But given that they drop off after several plays, I was ready to give it a try. Until I read this:

"ads will be closely targeted because of the personal information it gathers about its users when they register"

Another company that wants me to trade my privacy for the priviledge of saving a few bucks. No thanks.

[Marc]

I disagree with RIO's post. Would he rather receive an ad targetted to his interests, or one for let's say "carpet cleaning" or "punch the monkey". Targetted ad supported music deserves a go.

[Grant]

all of this talk makes me a little bit happier every day that I only listen to records. this notion of needing to be listening to music at all times of the day is ridiculous. When I put on a record, I have to be engaged in what I am doing and listening to - if I am not, I'm likely to scratch the record or let it reach the end of one side without changing it. It we aren't engaged and listening to the music, than why would listening to some obnoxious advertisement be a bad thing? If music is going to be subjugated to just background noise, and not savored and enjoyed as it is meant to be by the composers and artists, does it really matter that there is an advert for the first 8 times that you listen to a track?

[Mel]

"What an absolutely awful way of selling music!" ....Mike have you never listened to commercial radio? There you get 9 minutes worth in every hour. With this deal you will get less than half that! - a small price to pay for legal, safe music. As the guys say, the ads can be removed after a few plays anyway!

"ads will be closely targeted because of the personal information it gathers about its users when they register" - Joe - you are missing the point! The idea of gathering information - and at the moment it is only age, location and sex - is to make sure you only receive ads that are relevant to you! The more they know about your lifestyle the less intrusive the advertising becomes...if all media was as targeted as this we would all end up being exposed to far less advertising than we are now. Just walk around and see the plethora of brands that target en-mass without your permission...now that's intrusive!

[Bhima]

The first reaction to having ads played before a downloaded track, is enough to turn me away and back to P2P software to get my music..
However, the music industry is becoming almost homogenised and standaradised.. there are no new greats in the making.. our current artists are flash-in the pan wannabes, caterwauling to some moronic tune, with no depth and no purpose other than to conform to a previously set benchmark adopted by the record industry as a money spinner.. thus stifling creativity and innovation in music.

If this works, as a means for people to get their music out, so be it...
People pay for SkyTV and CableTV on a monthly subscription, which costs more than the TV license in this country; and they are still subjected to a good dose of advertising.. listen to a track 8 times with ads, and then it's yours without ads.. I think it's not a bad compromise.

Good luck, Peter, it's a good idea.

[Larry]

Although having the ads for a limited amount of time sounds horrible, the idea that you can get what you want from the artist actually is very good. There are a number of Gabriel songs (Don't Break that Rhythm, for example) I remember from the 45, but haven't seen the light of day since. It would be outstanding to be able to get those, and perhaps others directly from Pete. Here's to thinking outside of the box. It would also be fantastic if some of the pounds and pence went to the artist. Radio is dead. How else are we to get our music. $20 a pop for a group no one has heard of is insane.

[Arri ARmani]

I always thought Peter Gabriel was a classy kind of guy. This is a revolting idea. My illusion about him is NOW completely shattered. What an idiot...

[GJS]

You could always just script your computer to play every track 10 times and then just turn off your speakers and go do something else. Come back to DRM-free and ad-free music and be completely legal at the same time. :)

[ML]

Just checked out the site and found this updated info:

"After a period of time tracks can be re-download with the adverts stripped out. This period of time will depend on the type of tracks being downloaded, but generally it will be 4 weeks. For playlists containing Premium tracks this period of time may be longer.

Purchased tracks have no advertising material grafted onto them."

This, I suppose, is to stop people leaving the song to play 8 times without listening to it to get rid of the advert. Which is what I would have done.

Nevermind, it still seems a reasonably good idea.

Worth a try - it is free.

[Andrew. Lincoln, UK]

Why doesn't the music industry work with radio stations (internet and traditional)-most of whom already have adverts in them-and receive a cut from their revenue in return for providing songs for them to play?

Listeners would then hear music and adverts in the same way they always have, but then the radio stations could offer all the songs they play for free download via their websites.

Itunes radio? does that already exist?

[nick]

To my astonishment the music of Peter Gabriel or Genesis is un-available to download from the we7 website, go figure!!

[Dave Morp]

The music industry is the only industry that makes it,s customers feel like idiots and uncool for actualy purchasing its product . It is nieve to think offering music for free won,t impact on those prepared to pay . If you can get music legaly free it just further devalues music .More people will think there is nothing wrong with downloading illegaly as well. The only hope for the industry is a subscription based service where for a set fee you can download what you want .Artists would be paid according to how many times there songs were downloaded.

[Luke]

I've been using this service for a while, and I have to say the ads are intensely annoying. They shatter any rhythm that the album is trying to build up, and you begin to dread the end of a song because you know you'll be wapped with an ad any second...

Added to which the ads are in drawly disinterested voices (which I supposed are meant to sound cool), apart from some truly awful cacophonic ads for Altec Lansing speaker systems. Otherwise, it is an OK way to explore artists or styles that would otherwise be difficult to access.

For those who like that genre, with Gabriel's role in the world music scene there is some interesting stuff to be found.