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The concept of ad-supported music ranges from relatively sensible to outright dumb.

Last.fm’s recently announced “smart ads,” which respond dynamically to the beat of the music being played, are relatively sensible. In-music ads, which consist of sponsored announcements that play before the song, are outright dumb. This has not, however, stopped trueAnthem, a purveyor of the latter, from raising a $2 million round of seed capital and getting the sneaker manufacturer Adidas to sign up for an ad campaign.

The non-wisdom of in-music advertising is obvious: An announcement before a song cannot be clicked, therefore its efficacy cannot be accurately measured. The ads, which the artists themselves record, are intrusive and awkward on the first listen. If you download the track, the ad stays with it, playing every single time the track is played. The approach makes sense if the goal is to make the listener dislike the artist and hate the advertiser, but based on trueAnthem’s website, this does not appear to be what the company is trying to do.

Ad-supported music has seen a number of fits and starts. SpiralFrog, which launched last fall, lets people download DRM-protected tracks in exchange for interacting with ads on its site. The company managed to land a deal with Warner Music Group, but it’s not yet clear that it will actually go anywhere profitable. Companies like iMeem and MySpace employ the model, but, as a recent piece in Silicon Alley Insider argued, thanks to the expectations of the major labels (a penny for every play), these companies won’t have an easy time of it either.

To be fair, trueAnthem’s model also incorporates sponsored widgets. These widgets let listeners stream or download an artist’s music and features the sponsor’s logo. Unlike in-music ads, sponsored widgets make some sense.

But it’s hard to have much hope for a company whose CEO promotes “product placement that’s staying with the song forever.”

One of the bands working with trueAnthem is Hootie and the Blowfish, whose brief glimmer of success, like trueAnthem’s funding, will remain a mystery for generations to come.

A trueAnthem widget for Kristene Mirelle, a classically-trained pianist who turned pop, is below.

updated
MeeMix today went live with a public testing version of its Internet radio website. MeeMix faces plenty of competitors, such as Last.FM, Pandora and Slacker.

Meanwhile, another competitor, New York’s Spiralfrog, has just raised $2 million in debt. And yet another, Jango, is worth a mention. More on those in a sec.

First, MeeMix. This company hopes to change things by streaming music it thinks matches your taste. You’re only required to enter one song or an artist’s music that you enjoy. MeeMix analyzes a song’s parameters, such as its genre, and sub-genre, along with information about you. It’s algorithm then generates a customized station for you. In this way, it is more like Pandora than Last.Fm. Last.Fm focuses less on the components of music when it makes recommendations.

Located in Tel Aviv, MeeMix focuses solely on the U.S. market. The company cannot provide services in Israel because of licensing issues. However, MeeMix asserts that it is working on resolving those issues.

Meemix’s music catalog is limited. Although the company claims that it recently doubled the number of artists in the catalog, its size is still limited compared to larger players such as Last.FM or Pandora. It makes money from advertising.
SpiralFrog, meanwhile, is facing trouble reaching actual profitability. Last quarter the company lost $3.3 million, and earned only $20 thousand in actual revenue. It’s understandable that venture capitalists are hesitant to provide further funding for the company, and thus the debt. It also hopes to make money from advertising.

SpiralFrog’s service has also been deemed as unreliable, at times giving users more error messages than actual music.

Jango, yet another competitor of MeeMix and SpiralFrog, publicly launched last November. According to Compete.com, Jango had 244,522 users visit its site in November. Comparatively, the long entrenched competitor Last.FM boasted 1,372,691 users.Jango begins by asking you to type in the name of an artist that you would like to hear. From there, your “personalized” station starts playing a popular song by that artist. Users can then add more artists to that station as well as rate and ban songs. The station plays music by artists favored by users with similar tastes. The more of your own music you add, the less of others with similar tastes you will hear.

Jango also offers an embeddable widget, dubbed Jango Jukebox, that is completely customizable by the user. The widget features scrolling images of artists that allows viewers to select an artist image and play that artist’s music.

updated

Here’s the latest action:
1. Alibaba launches its own ad platform
2. SpiralFrog losing money rapidly
3. Viddler launches way to advertise at “tagged’ points within video
4. Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader receives mixed reviews
5. Advertising technology startup Clickable raising $3 million more
6. Hope you can afford a helicopter — Flying cars don’t work
7. Automattic’s founders, getting ready for cash out?
8. Google buying switches for network?
9. SuccessFactors has SuccessfulIPO

Alibaba launches its own ad platform — The third-biggest ad platform may soon turn out to be Alimama, which was launched today by Alibaba.com. Alibaba, you may recall, is 39 percent owned by Yahoo, and recently went public at a high valuation. Its ad network will try to dig into the spaces that Google Adsense and Baidu Union haven’t yet reached; according to the company, it already has 150,000 small websites and 135,000 bloggers ready to use it. TI is splitting revenue 50-50.

SpiralFrog losing money rapidly — SpiralFrog is a startup begun by a small group of large music companies. Despite the “free” music downloads it offers, it’s bleeding cash, according to Read/WriteWeb, with Q3 revenue of $20,400 and losses of $3.4 million. There may be a cautionary tale therein for other music startups, or just an indictment of the site’s model, which involves barraging users with ads and surveys at every turn.

Viddler launches way to advertise at “tagged’ points within video — It lets you overlay ads at certain points within a video. For example, a guitar ad can be displayed when someone on the video is playing a guitar. The advertiser knows the video clip is related to a guitar because the producer “tags’ that video clip as being about guitars. More here

Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader receives mixed reviews — The Financial Times has a good roundup of media reactions to the Kindle e-book, which we mentioned last week. Most comment on its less-than-pleasing appearance, but a few analysts are optimistic about its chances in the market.

Advertising technology startup Clickable raises $3 million more — Previous backers Union Square Ventures and Pequot Ventures have reportedly reinvested, after investing $3 million previously. [Update: The company says it hasn't finished raising the funding yet.]

Hope you can afford a helicopter — Because you’re not getting a flying car anytime soon. Moller, the maker of the M400 flying car, is out of money and has “substantial doubt” that it can go on. [via Jalopnik]

Automattic’s founders, getting ready for cash out? – Rumors are that Automattic, the parent company of the popular blog software Wordpress, is about to raise a round of capital from its backer, Polaris, that could cash out some of its executive team, i.e., give them substantial cash (as opposed to providing the company with the cash) in return for some of their personal shares. We’re told by a good source that the deal hasn’t gone through yet. Polaris confirms, saying: “We have stay a little mum on this for a few more weeks.” CEO Toni Schneider isn’t commenting.

Google buying switches for network? — We asked Google over the weekend about reports that they’re buying switches for some sort of telecom network. Turns the networking is for their own data centers. Check out the jobs on their site, which Google pointed us to, which suggest what it is doing: Lots of job openings for hardware and software engineers with networking backgrounds, for example here and here. Andrew Schmitt seems to have the details on Google’s plans.

Plaxo shows explosive growth after OpenSocial integration — Plaxo, once spurned because it was considered to spam you with update requests for its contact management service, is growing once again. “I’ve never seen a growth chart with such a sharply pronounced inflection point,” Plaxo marketing executive John McCrea tells CNET. “Within hours of the Google OpenSocial social network service unfolding, it was surge conditions here. Our service almost buckled.” See the full story here.

SuccessFactors has Successful IPO — Despite mounting losses, San Mateo, Calif. based SuccessFactors held its initial public offering. The online management tool provider’s market cap is now at about $650 million. The big venture capital winners are Greylock Partners, who owned almost a third of the firm, and TPG Ventures, with just under 20 percent. Cardinal Ventures, Canaan Partners, Emergence Capital Partners and Granite Global Ventures also held stakes.