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I've been hearing people mention WE7 a lot lately, the new ad/message supported, free, legal, DRM-free music download service. PR: "Rock legend Peter Gabriel has teamed up with technology entrepreneur Steve Purdham and financial authority John Taysom to bring advertisers a new ad delivery mechanism. The platform, We7, uses free music downloads as a vehicle to communicate personalised advertising messages, allowing brands to intimately connect with consumers on- and offline."

Giles Turnbull wrote a review of the WE7 service and the concept on May 2, on MacDevCenter.com. You can read more about it on the WE7 site as well.

I think it's sort of reasonable to build a business model which posits that people will download free music even if there's an ad on the head of the file, I mean, millions of people still willingly watch commercials all night long on television, don't they? (Then again, most folks pay money to a cable TV company so that they can see their commercials more clearly than ever before... eww, I just got goose-bumps) The only problem I can see from this early vantage point with WE7 is the question of: will people switch to a model like this AFTER such a long period of downloading music (sometimes for cash, sometimes for free) with no advertising attached to it? I don't think so. I won't, I know that much. The other question I have is if you want to download a whole album, is there an ad at the beginning of every song? Sounds like there will be. That sort of ruins the point of listening to an album doesn't it? That would just piss me off to no end. The service may be perfect for someone, and it may be a huge success—in a way I hope it is, I've always loved Gabriel, and I wish him continued success as an artist and business mogul—but it's not for a real music fan, it's probably just fine for a music consumer, which kinda just gives me more goose-bumps.

We'll see where this all heads in the coming months. I'll keep you posted as I learn more. -

Oh, and you pronounce it "we-seven." At first, I assumed it was "wev" because of David Fincher's spelling of the title of his 1995 shocker, Se7en, and also because of the fact that I figured Nintendo had the "we" syllable locked down, for 2007 at least, with it's revolutionary Wii console gaming system. I do love Peter Gabriel's music, but I don't think I would bother trying to save the $10 on a new record from him if it meant I had to endure a jarring blipvert betwixt the tracks.