As for ad-funded downloads - well, with the much touted advertising-based download service SpiralFrog still restricted to the US and Canada throughout 2008, here in the UK we had to look to the Peter Gabriel backed We7 for our ad-funded free downloads. Unfortunately no one I know has actually looked, so I can't tell you if it's any good.
The ad-funded music service that has got everyone in Team CMU excited is an on-demand streaming service rather than a download store, offering ad-funded access to a huge range of music through an iTunes-style streaming player. If one digital music service deserves to succeed in 2009 it's Spotify. Go check it out now.
If you're counting ad-funded on-demand streaming in his section, we should also mention the Last.fm player which expanded this year after securing licensing deals with all four majors in January, no doubt aided by the large cheque book of their relatively new owners CBS. And we should also name-check MUZU, the music video website with the best video player we've ever found on the net, so much so we're using it for our own fledgling video service CMU-Tube, and we teamed up with the guys there for some CMU promotions this Autumn.
Of course the biggest ad-funded streaming service on the net is probably still YouTube, which continued to be the world's first port of call for random music videos this year despite the plethora of new video-sharing services on the web these days. The Google-owned video site has deals in place with all four majors of course, and some reports this year suggested the royalties it was paying out - a cut of ad revenue with a minimum per-track guarantee - were becoming substantial.
In fact, Universal last week declared that YouTube royalties were now netting them tens of millions a year, while Nettwerk Management top man Terry McBride said in the summer that Avril Lavigne was expecting to generate $2 million from her YouTube video-plays alone. That said, presumably YouTube revenue isn't so significant that a major couldn't manage without it given that Warner Music this weekend announced they were pulling their content from the the video platform in a dispute over royalty rates.