We7 to offer free music downloads

Musician Peter Gabriel has unveiled a new legal download music service that offers free tracks to consumers who agree to listen to adverts.

The service, called We7, will let you legitimately receive and share songs that have adverts attached. This is to ensure artists receive royalties for making their music available.

We7, set to launch at the beginning of June, works by 'grafting' ads onto the front of music tracks and albums based on a consumer's personal demographics such as age, location and gender.

Peter Gabriel said: "We7 provides artists - even across the more experimental or minority genres - with the opportunity to build a new source of income from their music. Ad funded downloads are the way to provide free music to the consumer without depriving musicians of their livelihood."

If you want a track with no ad, there’s an option to buy the track at normal price. Ads don’t remain attached to the tracks forever - after a period of time you will have the choice to have the track ad free.

In a separate announcement, Gabriel's media player plug-in The Filter, which provides automatic recommendations of new music, is now available for Windows Media Player.

Originally launched for iTunes through Windows XP, the Filter creates playlists from your music library depending on your mood, activity, likes and dislikes.

The Filter for WMP runs on WMP 10 and 11 – Windows XP and Windows Vista.The Filter is also available for iTunes on Mac and PC and the following Nokia mobile phones - Series 60, Nokia E60, N93 and N80.

www.thefilter.com
www.we7.com

More news via RSS Post item to Del.icio.us Post item to Digg.com