Trumblog

MicroSoft announced on Wednesday that there are exploring options for ad supported music. The situation that they proposed and demoed at Advance ’08 is that a company or brand sponsors a concert. The Zune Social profiles for the artists performing at that concert would then have an ad for that company or brand on it and if you were to “friend” that artist you might be able to download tracks by that artist for free. The company or brand logo then could appear in the album art associated with that track.

The announcement has led to some hoopla, gnashing of teeth and throwing stones at MicroSoft, but I just don’t get it. I think that this is a logical option and wonder why it hasn’t already been done.

Let’s start with the acknowledgment that stealing music is wrong and illegal; because if you compare free vs paying anything whether it is money, attention, etc. free always wins. In this plan you have the option of downloading music for free, but in exchange you have an advertisement on your mp3 player. Now as far as I know this is not an audio ad at the beginning or end of the track, this is an ad instead of album art or a text ad somewhere associated with the track. How is this more obtrusive than an ad on Pandora or LastFM? It certainly seems less annoying than an ad on the radio or a podcast.

Personally I’m a little anal about the data associated with my music so I’d want the “real” album art for a track and the correct track, artist, album names not ads and it seems to me like that would be an option. Assuming that the ad is album art for the free tracks, that can be swapped. It’s not hard at all. If the ad is text somehow associated with the meta data that can be edited too assuming that there is no DRM associated with the track.

And that’s the rub. If I am paying for that music with attention I want that music to be mine, not the advertisers. It needs to be DRM free, which is really to the advertiser’s benefit when I share that awesome song with friends. The music has to be good. In college I’d buy promo tapes hoping to discover a new band and generally expand my taste. There was usually one or two good songs on each. If the music doesn’t at least hit the 10% ratio of good music to junk, and it probably needs to be higher, then people won’t be bothered to download the song no matter how free it is. And finally there has to be a logical connection between the music and the advertiser.  Sports drink ads for Belle & Sebastian listeners just isn’t going to make a logical connection.

Sure, free music without any advertising would be awesome, but this seems like an awfully small price to pay.

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