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Podbridge last week raised a ton of cash in their second round of funding, to build a podcast advertisement system. The round was thought to be insane by many pundits. Alarm Clock commented by saying that “It doesn’t seem logical to us that podcast advertising will be bigger than blog advertising“.
Mashable also came in with a short jab and said that “Podcasting seems like one of those trends that was overhyped, over-funded, and didn’t prove as popular with consumers as many first thought. I’m not going to say that Podbridge is overcooked, but come on: $8.5 million? What would they need to deliver to live up to that?“.
I however had a different perspective to the story, and was thinking that in times of diminishing revenues from CD sales Music label companies might be forced to give away music volumes for free provided if the users hear to 3-15 seconds of advertisement before hearing the song. With EMI forced to abolish DRM and Jingle Networks successfully experimenting with free 411 calls supported by ads and Google following its footsteps, this seemed to me as the logical next step.
The New York Times is now reporting that the music labels, who for years attempted to prevent fans from downloading songs from p2p networks, are now encouraging people to listen to music that way-provided they view/hear some advertising first. Not only this several startup companies are now pursuing the idea of advertising supported music, including SpiralFrog, Ruckus and Qtrax. Qtrax, which will officially launch in September, already has deals with Warner Music Group and EMI Group to give away music for free, and earn off from ads. They plan to announce a similar deal with SonyBMG today. It seems that my suggestions were heard even before I made them, or may be I was dumb enough to suggest the obvious. I however will continue to believe the former.
There are still some restrictions that I find unreasonable, and believe will go away with time. Like the restriction of allowing “Listeners to hear a song a certain number of times — probably five in the case of most major label acts. In case listeners like what they hear, they will be able to purchase those songs”.
I believe that one day all software, services and media will be free for everyone to use and benefit from. In fact I believe in something more than this, I could see a time when companies would actually pay the users to use their services, in a bid to rise above the noise created by freely offered services. More on this later.
Beware kids, don’t let the iPhone iBugs bite!
