They are a Coalition of Artists and Stake Holders and support their artists in a number of ‘alternative ways’. This is a new in a long list of new model ideas that have taken over the music industry. Basically, the new model means music is primarily FREE to the end user. Many do go on to support artists by buying signed merchandise, sponsoring and more. The future online is FREE, but this is not a bad thing.

If music and content is distributed free to the end user, but that content is monetised at source then a lot more people will be able to listen to music ‘guilt free’ while supporting new releases. They can then pay premium dollars for physical media and of course live appearances. I wonder what would be next in the wild frontier of online music.

We7 so far has the best strategy. The ads are embedded in the audio stream and will be listened to at least once. At the moment the ads are pointing back to We7 which seems like a sensible strategy as listeners are less likely to be irritated by an advert directing them to the site from which they came in the first place.