Yahoo is said to be in talks with record labels on offering DRM free music to customers.
The options discussed by Yahoo are to sell DRM free music, or offer it ad supported and free to.
According to an AP report, the talks took place last month, but are still at a preliminary stage with Yahoo still working out details. Yahoo has confirmed the talks, but not the details of them.
Yahoo offering DRM free music isn’t ground shaking given Amazon already does and others are headed in this direction. Offering that DRM free music for free however is a big step forward towards the inevitable march to free. It will be interesting to see how Yahoo implements monetization strategies if they go down this path, and how it will be received. For example, will users tolerate advertising in the download itself?
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I heard they’re paying the 1000 ppl they layoff with a 500Gb SATA Drive full of music.
Maybe they will insert a 30 second advertisement 1/2 way through the song
@Matt
yeah that would be so awesome, half way through a Eddie Van Halen guitar
solo you hear “This song is brought to you buy…”
I agree with Matt
I agree with Matt
http://technoq.blogspot.com
Yup,look cool
http://mp3nation.blogspot.com
If they had effective advertising, to couple free downloads then the model would work. However current Internet advertising is total cack.
http://thenextweb.org/2008/01/.....magazines/
If its true then i will be awesome, but i still dont see, how it can beat Torrents.
great news. In a year or two music industry will be very different.
DRM had to die, and it does.
Hi, my name is Gareth Reakes and I am the CTO at We7. DRM free downloads is exactly what we do. We don’t have front line catalogue just yet but what we do have is expanding on a weekly basis. We fund the purchase of the track with a combination of standard banner advertising and a short, targeted audio advert attached to the beginning of the track. You can get an ad free version after a month of listening to it with an ad. As we get more and more proof of the business model we believe we will be able to get front line content. Any feedback on the site is appreciated.
Gareth- I honestly think that it is a horrible idea offering a “short, targeted audio advert” within a song itself. I would tolerate advertising in the searching and discovery process, but not within the music itself.
http://www.mybloop.com is already doing short targeted audio ads every few songs.
The best way to do it is short (5-10 secs), targeted (location, timezone, sex, music preferences, age), and not for every song.
Then advertisers get the bang for their buck and users don’t even think about skipping the ad cause its so short.
This is the way to go for music, podcasts, and everything audio, an untapped market which begs to be ad sponsored, people are not gonna pay for music anymore as the time passes.
“I take CARE of MY KIDS!”
- Chris Rock
many companies promised already, that they will offer music for free
then this comes regularly with a small trick (half the song, with ads, …)
there is no free lunch
Hello Everyone! My name is William Fleming and I am the President and Founder of TurnItUp Media.
While many companies have tapped the ad-supported music model, we at TurnItUp Media have a different philosophy. How about a Patent-Pending 100% Ad-based Music Service? The music you download is paid for by the advertisers, so after you watch the ad your part is finished. Okay, so if you “want”, you can click on the advertiser’s link to get discounts and coupons for their products, but that is up to you!
With the music download phase of its Beta Test expected to launch before the end of the 1st quarter (2008), the ad-based music distributor, TurnItUp Media, is coming to the market with a respectable portfolio of over 2.4 million songs-and counting, all of which are 100% DRM-FREE.
If you don’t want to wait until the end of the year and would like to be part of a truly unique and industry changing model, then join the TurnItUp Media Revolution! We are currently running our first phase of the beta test which enables users to test the profile system.
Come check us out at http://www.TurnItUpMedia.com.
um, author? can you please work harder on your grammar? very tough to read / trust content from someone who doesnt know their to/too’s
I wouldn’t mind advertising in the song, like if it was just a simple text ad that scrolled in the song title in player like WMP or Winamp. But a 30 sec audio ad in the song would never work. Who would tolerate that?