Noooo.....
Not another one, first Last.FM, then Spotify and now We7.
The days of legal freeloading on demand music look to be over :(
Is there anyone in the world who needs to know the difference between "on demand" and "non-interactive" music? We use the words "jukebox" and "radio" as shorthand – but really, no one should care. But in the archaic world of music licensing, the two command different royalty rates – and the higher on-demand rates are squeezing …
I'm a bit disappointed in the WE7 transition, but I suppose I didn't help the situation by using ad-block, which managed to block most of the ads they put at the beginning of each track. Am using the radio service, but I find their picks aren't as good as Pandora's.
Anyway, the best alternative is a bit clunky and will probably go away eventually as well. I use Tor Browser to access Rdio and sign up for their 7 day free trial. I do it, once a week, creating a "unique" email address using gmail's + feature (eg myemailaddress@gmail.com, myemailaddress+1@gmail.com, myemailaddress+2@gmail.com) which Rdio will accept as a new email address. You'll need to configure tor to only use US exit nodes and enable Flash on Tor Browser (thus negating the purpose of Tor Browser), but it works. Clunky as all hell, but it's price those Freetards amongst us have to pay ;)
As one of the 2% that listens to over 50 tracks per month on we7 (6000 tracks in 15 months according to my last.fm profile) I expect I will pay £5 per month for the service.
However I do think that now they won't get many paid subscriptions because they have made it impossible to browse artists and albums to check out exactly what music they stock before signing up for the service. I haven't tried napster for this reason...
For purely a radio service why you wouldn't just use last.fm instead? we7's radio suggestions are powered by last.fm anyway!
Instead I've been checking out mflow this week which does offer free on demand streaming (of albums). Although the music catalog isn't quite as big as we7 or spotify it is completely free and somehow it's ad free aswell.