When you can download your music to your PC or mobile device, and that download comes with ads which occur at random, not the same ad every time you listen to the same song, what do you have?
You have an advertising environment which is an attractive substitute for radio and which involves the radio industry not at all.
How does it work?
“A user can download tracks for free and save them on a portable device such as a cell phone with an MP3 player. New ads are regularly transmitted to the device, saved, and played at non-predictable times between tracks of the free downloaded music,” Marc Cohen, president of SixtySeven Kilohertz, Inc., explained. “A user can listen to the same track many times and hear different ads during each listening session.”
More here.
It will lack the charm of radio, but it will be the music you control, front to back.
For free.