Following this week’s Qtrax fiasco, ad-supported music download services are very much in the spotlight. UK-based We7, backed by Peter Gabriel, is one such offering, enabling users to download free MP3s that have a short (and targeted) audio advert embedded at the start of each track. The ads then auto-expire after four weeks of listening, allowing users to re-download the same tracks ad-free.

Earlier today I caught up with We7 CEO Steve Purdham (over IM) to find out more about the company’s mission, and to discuss issues such as DRM, resistance by the major labels, new business models and more.

What is the problem that We7 is trying to solve? Tell us a bit about your model and why you started the company.

The problem is simple: if music is free who pays the artist? Our model tries to create a relationship between fan, band and advertiser. Fans gets free music, advertiser gets listened to, and bands (and We7) get paid.

[I] got involved when I met the original founders John Taysom and Gareth Reakes, initially just as an investor but the idea is irrationally seductive so I also decided to run and build the business as well as invest. Continue reading »

Watching the Qtrax PR fiasco unfold over the last few days (“we have all four majors on board, err, no we don’t”, “we’ve launched, err, no we haven’t”) provided a great lesson in what not to do when launching a new product i.e. lie to reporters. However, a ton of questions remain unanswered, not least of which being: is a free and legal music download service on the scale of Qtrax too good to be true?

But first, a recap of what Qtrax claims to be offering. Continue reading »

U2’s longtime manager Paul McGuinness, a man highly respected in the recording industry, got his speech today at Midem ass backwards.

He called for Internet service providers (ISPs), telecom companies, and hardware manufacturers to help in the fight against music piracy on the Web. That’s good.

But then he said, “I suggest we shift the focus of moral pressure away from the individual P2P file thief and on to the multibillion dollar industries that benefit from these countless tiny crimes.”

No matter what I think of Microsoft, Google, AOL, Yahoo, Comcast, Vodafone, Facebook, and Apple, it doesn’t seem to me that they are at fault for the recording industry’s woes. Yet McGuinness rubs their noses in it, saying “their snouts have been at our trough feeding for free for too long.” (Financial Times account.) Continue reading »

SeeqPod, the novel and handy playable music search engine, is being sued by Warner Music for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), only there’s a twist. SeeqPod isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong: It is not hosting any copyright infringing music.

With SeeqPod music fans can search the Web for artists they are interested in, turning up not only official recordings from bands but EPs, rare tracks, and music recorded by fans at concerts, with varying levels of quality. Users can browse the results, create a playlist, save it, share it, and listen to the tracks right in the browser. Continue reading »