Free, ad-supported music is all the rage these days. It used to be that only terrestrial radio let you listen for free in return for being exposed to ads, but now everything from on-demand websites to over-the-air cellphone downloads can be accessed for free if you're willing to put up with a few ads. Soon, the same concept could be coming to the Microsoft Zune.
At Microsoft's advertiser conference on Tuesday, the president of the company's entertainment and devices division Robbie Bach (pictured) demoed a system that would allow artists or labels to create a Zune profile page
In order to get free songs, a user could befriend the artist on the Zune network for access to their playlist, according to CNET. The artist's profile page and songs that would be downloadable from it would contain an advertising image that would appear whenever the user played the song on their PC or Zune.
If this sounds familiar, it could because Podington Bear had the same idea over a year ago.
Another option Bach threw out there was for users to play anAsteroids-like videogame with a company's logo embedded in it. Again,
we've heard this one before; CloudTrade's cellphone music service lets you download songs for free if you play a tile-sliding puzzle game with a logo.
Still, Microsoft has more resources and a wider ad network thanPodington Bear or CloudTrade, not to mention a variety of platformsacross which to run ad campaigns (PC, TV, smartphone, XBox and Zune).
Seattle PI says Microsoft plans to launch a pilot of the program soon.
As much as the idea of ads infiltrating our personal devices ispotentially annoying, an album art ad is hardly the end of the world.
As long as they stay away from audio ads, I'll take all the free musicI can get.
