Rock star Peter Gabriel has launched a new music download service that will offer free music – but it comes with a price: It comes with ads. The new service, dubbed We7 is meant to benefit both fans and musicians. Listeners won’t have to pay for their music, and musicians will receive income from the adrevenue. We7 uses MediaGraft technology, which embeds ads into both music and video downloads. As the download business tries to establish a model that can really work to everyone’sbenefit, Gabriel, whose career stretches back to being lead singer with Genesis in the early 1970s, feels this could be the way forward. “A lot of people under the age of 30 do not buymusic anymore, and I think record executives are noticing their kids doing what every other kid is doing, and they, and artists, have to say, ‘how do we deal with this?’ Establishedartists like me are going to find all sorts of ways, and you shouldn’t worry about us. But you should worry about young artists coming through, and, in our field, world music – a lot of those artistshave had 50-60% of their income from record sales.” Gabriel promised the ads would contain “useful stuff,” and trusted that listeners wouldn’t find them off-putting. It’s not the first time he’s dipped a toe into these waters. Back in 1999 he was the brains behind OD2. That service compiled around 350,000 tracks before Gabriel sold it to theAmerican company Loudeye in 2004. His decision to return to the marketplace has been prompted by the willingness of the music business to embrace free downloads.
