Universal Music has teamed up with a start-up company SpiralFrog, that will allow consumers to download songs for free – relying on advertising for its revenues.

The Financial Times reports that this reflects music companies willingness to experiment as they try to capture some profit from the boom in digital distribution, “still dominated by illegal file-sharing networks”.

Surely, this isn’t the case? How will advertising drive profit? If I was one of the millions of people that download music illegally, I’d be interested in getting music as quickly and as freely as possible, rather than spend time pawing over advertisements. It’s more probable that the music industry still doesn’t have a clue how to leverage its product for the internet.