While I agree it would be rediculously annoying, it totally makes sense that companies would try to start doing such things.

Personally, I'm wondering when the more-corporate pop stars will start being more overt with product placement. I remember there being some talk of this a few years back with a Busta Rhymes song.

I just googled and found an article about that very thing. There are some more articles on it here and here. It seems to be something happening primarily in hip hop.

But, as for actual commercials at the beginning of a free mp3 track... I can't see it taking off. Unless of course something is immediately made availalbe on the webi that provides a way to hack the ads off, which I'm sure would happen. Perhaps tivo for the ipod? :)

Sigue Sigue Sputnik sort of beat everyone to the punch on the imbedded advertising thing so, so many years ago, didn't they?

The cover of the new Toby Keith LP is a Ford advertisement. That's pretty darn embedded.

If you get info on a track in iTunes, can't you set the start/end time of each track manually? I believe you can, which would make it quite easy to just lop off the first 15 or 30 seconds of a song if it's advertising. You'd never know the difference.

what a pain in the ass. this is the same reason nobody watches news clips on MSN.com... I'd just download the torrent of an entire album if a band did this. advertisers need to stop thinking they have the 10 1/2...