But it would appear this CNET blogger was invited. He states he found the experience of watching ads – of selecting ads and then watching them – before getting the downloads was “…surprisingly painless.”  Now that’s a ringing endorsement, right up there with my personal favorite, “I didn’t hate it nearly as much as I thought I would.”

Yet the author describes a process in which the user really only gets 30-second samples of songs before being forced to pick an advertising sponsor, having to sit through a 15-second advertisement and then getting the download.

I warn you, reader, what follows is a mean-spirited, judgmental and completely uninformed review of Free All Music’s beta offering (remember, I didn’t get an invite): ridiculous.

How is this better or worse than Spiral Frog’s attempt? It’s not, it’s the same flawed idea. Get a consumer to watch ads in exchange for a “free” song download. What’s the first thing wrong with that idea? You can’t make sure the consumer saw the ad and didn’t just minimize the Free All Music window (a behavior that the CNET blogger cheekily noted he’d never endorse, of course). Second, what do you think the value of an impression is when the media being exchanged with the consumer can be readily acquired for free or a small amount on many services? In other words, Free All Music channel isn’t the only place to get it.

But what interested me about the story was a comment from a reader who said he/she hoped the model worked because it’s “…perfect for those of us with a low to moderate appetite for music.”

So consumers with a “…low to moderate appetite for music”  – meaning they aren’t passionate about it, they aren’t into music – are willing to deal with ads to get free versions of something they are kind of interested in?

Please, somebody tell me how this is going to be a real business. Tell me how this is going to be an important revenue stream for the music industry. 

Discussions with MOG’s David Hyman, and some demos of the service,  leave me thinking that one thing Hyman and crew have to be recognized for is their willingness, or perverse stubbornness, to engage in extended negotiations with the labels (and publishers)  to obtain favorable license terms. These terms translated into the fully interactive streaming and playlist creation capabilities – functionality many consumers associate with more expensive Rhapsody and Napster services.

As we’ve noted in multiple notes and presentations, licensing content (by services from rightsholders) is a bigger challenge than any particular technology issue, and Hyman did nothing to dispute in that in our discussions. Hyman is no newbie when it comes to dealing with the labels given his time at Gracenote and SonicNet. That said, All Access is going to hit the market at roughly the same time Rhapsody and Napster (owned by BestBuy) will still be plugging away  but their subscriber numbers have either hit a plateau or dropped. But they continue to invest as apster just announced a deal with Dell to preload the Napster software on select Dell PCs and provide a year’s worth of free streaming and 60 free MP3 downloads, and Rhapsody has announced an iPhone application that lets existing subscribers extend their access to the iPhone. All Access will hear the footsteps of Europe’s favorite music service, Spotify, which is supposed to launch in the U.S. sometime in 2010.

What MOG’s going to be able to leverage is the nine-plus-million monthly visitors (counted in October, according to Quantcast) to MOG’s blogging network, started in 2006. Much of the MOG blogging network’s appeal is the nearly constant flow of reviews, thoughts and observations about music – the sort of information one would expect to see on a site devoted to music geeks who treat the interest with the kind of enthusiasm one typically sees with (some) sports fans.  If All Access can use the MOG network as a customer acquisition tool (without harming its inherent appeal to the bloggers and readers), one can imagine that incumbent music subscription services will be scrambling to survive.

What’s really likely to happen, though, is the favorable terms MOG was able to obtain will quickly be replicated by others. At that point, it will all be about the type of experience MOG can deliver that will differentiate it from the competition. But until I can get my hands on a demo account for All Access, we’ll have to wait and see.