MySpace Music, a joint venture between News Corp. and major recording companies, is experimenting with audio ads that must play before users can listen to free, streaming music.
AP reports that the 30-second ads began appearing last week and that MySpace Music wants to boost the frequency of such ads before settling on how often they'll be running.
The ads won't necessarily play before every single song—if they did, I imagine that would get kind of irritating when listening to a full album.
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MySpace may not have a chance to dominate social networking, but I think it's worth them focusing on being a dominant force in the world of streaming music. If I were them, I'd make sure that I was making as much money as possible from it as long as it didn't have a negative effect on the customer experience.
I can't imagine any users getting too upset about this, because there are already many sites/services that have something similar in place and I don't think such ads are a big inconvenience.