I have been searching for a way to offer fans of my band (The Reverse Engineers) a way to download our music for free so they can share our music with their friends. I have finally found a solution to this problem - www.we7.com. This is how it works: they append a short ad to the front of an mp3 file, users download the song for free and if they don't want an ad attached to the song they have the option to buy the song. Artists get royalties for each download of a song (this can range from 15 cents to 80 cents per download). Considering that many people get their music for free on the internet or from a friends ripped mp3 files....the ad-supported business model would solve this and help support music artists. Their site is in beta, the full site will go live sometime this summer.

There are plans for a widget that can be placed on any website that would allow for the viral distribution of songs (included in the widget would be a preview button for the song). My band has already submitted 9 of our songs to their website for inclusion on the site and I look forward to seeing how this works out. Our inclusion in the site is not guaranteed though, the website users will determine which bands are good enough for the We7 website. This will be a great filtering tool for the site. We7 came onto the scene very recently, they came online in early May '07. Peter Gabriel was involved in getting the site started.

There are other sites such as www.spiralfrog.com that will be offering ad-supported music but they have yet to become available.

If you are in a band I highly suggest you submit your music to www.we7.com and get into the game early.