Napster has been doing this for over two years at free.napster.com and Napster offers so much more it's amazing anyone even writes about this. Grow up, people. Music has value and artists and IP owners deserve to be compensated. Napster and Rhapsody offer an amzing value with their subscription services and all these new so called business models like last.fm, imeem, spiralfrog, ruckus are a bunch of crap compared to what Napster offers.
ianbetteridge Well first of all, Last.fm IS compensating the artists, with a proportion of the ad revenue going directly to them. Yes, you're correct that Napster has been doing this for years - but the free.napster.com service hasn't expanded beyond the US, which means that huge markets for music aren't being served. I suspect this is because Napster has never actually worked out how to monetize it.