Ad-supported music has some bright spots and some low points. I'm not sure where trueAnthem ranks, but I like its business model. The startup raised $2 million and added Adidas as a sponsor. Unlike most free ad-supported music, songs from trueAnthem are available as MP3 files (the ones I downloaded were 128kbps) and begin with brief audio advertisements. There is also an ad at the bottom of each widget from which songs are streamed and downloaded. The press release says ad-free tracks can be purchased for $0.99 apiece, but I have not found a widget with this option.

The question is, Through what will consumers suffer for free downloads?

VentureBeat is horrified by the idea of placing audio advertisements at the beginning of free downloads. I listened to many of the ads found them not to be very intrusive. In fact, I barely noticed most of them (hard not to notice Ultraviolet Sound's ads). The artist does a very brief announcement at onset of the song. There's no loud, barking radio ad voice, just an announcement of the song and the sponsor. It's like an artist introducing a song at a concert and squeezing in a thank you to the show's sponsor. I never mind an artist saying a few thank yous on stage.

Some people may use an audio editor to chop off the advertisement, although I think the ads are benign enough that few would bother. Many ads lay over music, so chopping off an ad would mean the modified track would have an abrupt start that's missing a bit of the song.

If all I've got to do for free music is listen to the artist speaking for three seconds before each song, sign me up...as long as they offer something I'd want in my collection. The bigger hoop to jump through, in my opinion, is signing up for an account and downloading each track one at a time. To its credit, trueAnthem made the process about as painless as it is going to get.

Like I said, I like the business model. It needs to achieve proper scale, either from maxing out the quantity of artists (could be hard to do while targeting ads) or getting some star power on board. And trueAnthem will need to convince consumers to purchase tracks. I'm far more skeptical about consumers' willingness to buy tracks from widgets, but the free, ad-supported side of the business has promise.

[music jobs] Boosey & Hawkes is looking for a Royalty Tracker.