Quoted: Music is nice, but free music is even better. With all the talk of DRM, lawsuits and the RIAA we ...

Earlier this year, there was a huge fuss over the UK's Daily Mail newspaper's promotion giving away the new Prince CD for free with a copy of the newspaper. It seemed like a pretty good way of dealing with the troubles facing both the newspaper industry and the recording industry -- offering a new way of financing music combined with a new way to promote and distribute music, all the while helping give people a reason to actually buy a newspaper. It was so reasonable that it freaked out the recording industry, music stores and even other newspapers. However, it appears that some newspapers have decided to go even further. Michael Geist lets us know that over the weekend, the Vancouver Sun put up a freely downloadable compilation of songs from Nettwerk Music. You may recall Nettwerk as being the Canadian record label that seems to actually understand that the trick isn't in fighting against consumers (or in suing them), but in giving them what they want. Thus, it's not really a huge surprise that it would be this label that took part -- allowing well known acts like Sarah McLachlan and the Barenaked Ladies to take part in this promotion. What's a little strange is that the promotion only lasted for one day. However, it is good to see more newspapers (and bands) at least experimenting with this type of model. It has a long way to go, but through this experimenting the next generation of music business models are going to be discovered.

Quoted: Start-up that made a splash a year ago has yet to launch online music service. Despite setbacks, company isn't ruling out public offering.

The long-awaited free ad-supported music download service SpiralFrog faces new competition from a similar service called We7, which already has over 75,000 songs with another 125,000 on the way, and an estimated total of 500,000 by the end of the year, although some tracks are not available to US-based IP addresses. The company recently inked deals with V2 Records and Sanctuary Records (others to join later).

I interviewed We7's CEO Steve Purdham to find out more about the service, which allows users to download MP3 files that have an audio ad embedded at the beginning of the track (as opposed to SpiralFrog's soon-to-be-launched service, which will show users a video ad). If you're too lazy to edit the ad out of the song, you can buy an ad-free version of the song -- or just wait until the ad expires, when you're allowed to download a clean version.

This autumn sees the release of Bruce Springsteen's 15th studio album, but you can get your first taste here, exclusively on Guardian Unlimited Music.

For one week only we're offering you the opportunity to download - for free - the track Radio Nowhere from the upcoming long player, Magic, not due to hit the shops (physical or virtual) until October 1 2007.

Jamendo allows users to listen and download for free more than 40.000 DRM-less music tracks under Creative Commons license. So far, 3 million albums have been legally downloaded from the Jamendo platform, which currently counts 500.000 unique visitors per month. Since January 2007, Jamendo offers to its artists a Revenue Share program: half of the advertising revenue are shared with the registered artists.

Quoted: Nearly three-quarters of US Internet users are willing to view ads in exchange for free or discounted downloads, according to the INTENT MediaWorks-sponsored "P2P Usage Survey" conducted in

Quoted: A month ago, CD-swapping service Lala took a risk: offering streaming complete albums from major artists, online and for free. ...

Quoted: Online music has always been popular, and now social networks, peer recommendations and personalized radio stations are helping fans find ...