The ad based music download site began in September 2007. Without warning, the service went dark yesterday, Thursday, March 19, 2009. Free Downloads if users would watch ads just once a month seemed to have become a Thanks but No Thanks offer as the music industry rightfully has moved away from DRM.

We all sign up for different services. As easily as we sign up with services we get bored. Our focus changes. There are parties to go to. There are beaches that don't have enough sandcastles. I may go two months without signing into some of my social network accounts.
But when people followed this natural behavior, people would find their music libraries on the system f'd up.

But beyond that, online business has become much more difficult. The company borrowed 9 million dollars last year to stay a float but it simply did not have advertisement revenue to cover cost. The popularity of the iTunes Store (now the largest music retailer in the US) and Amazon's MP3 Downloads store have further proven, what basic common sense should suggest, that consumers prefer to own their music without DRM restrictions.

I had an economic teacher, who I totally hated, but he did make one valid point. Nothing is really free. Everything has cost. And sometimes the aggravation of advertisments or other inconveniences is too high of a cost. Most online advertisements do not work unless they provide an information value to the consumer. At first, before google's ads became overly controlled and manipulated by the big advertsers and google, the ad results often provided as much value to the consumer as the organic search reults. That is no longer true. Altavista screwed up in the old days by allowing paid ads to screw up organic listings.

Porn sites that maintain good practices, don't do popup hells or other mindless shit, generally do a good job of mixing content and ads where the ads sometimes add value to the content. Mainstream has generally had a a problem in finding a balance between content and advertisments where the two compliment. And even adult, has debated what is the line between too much "free" that hurts sales and alternatively where ads not only stop producing sales but in fact the ads kills traffic to the "free."

Any way. Point is. The internet business is hard. I will end the ramble there.