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Recording Industry has always been haunted by the illegal peer-to-peer files sharing networks which most people use to find music. But soon, the whole thing can be legalized by asking users to look at an ad either in text or video in return for free, legal music. A three year old company called Intent MediaWorks has figured out a way to embed pop-ups in music and video files unobtrusively and the company believes that consumers don’t want to rip music, but they just want to get music as easily as possible.
Advertisers want to reach wide audience, so they are willing to pay $5.80 per 1000 text ad views and $30+ for video, which is helps Intent cover their profit and share the money with their artist and labels. Overall, it’s a win-win for everybody.
I think it will probably kill illegal music download only by a small percentage, if done in large scale because you’ll have to watch an ad every time you play the music which is unacceptable for most of us. Plus, it’ll be somewhat hard to fill the music in your portable music players and play it offline. However, it’ll be nice to see a free alternative to stop illegal music downloads. Here in India, you can’t blame kids for downloading illegal music because there is no option but to download music via peer-to-peer file sharing. I would like to see music stores like iTunes start operating in countries like India.
Source: CNN Money
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wrote, on April 26th, 2007
Where will this end.. pop ups in my MP3 player?!
wrote, on April 26th, 2007
I don’t think it will change at all actual illegal download rates at all. If one can choose between free without ads and free with ads normally choose the first.
wrote, on April 27th, 2007
Yeah, I think people will still download illegal songs because it’ll always be more convenient. No matter what. However, people who otherwise bought music might very well switch over to this. People who want thousands of songs just can’t pay all that money. It’s too darn expensive.
wrote, on April 27th, 2007
Advertising supported music will work and grow the music industry with the right model. However, the Qtrax model of presenting ads visually into an audio medium is not the right model.
wrote, on May 5th, 2007
Nice! If this is a free music download, then count me in! I’m really a music lover so I definitely love this offer!
wrote, on September 22nd, 2007
well i believe this can end piracy - if boring programs of tv can earn producers in millions why not free music with pop ups ??