I laid my cards on the table at the start of the year and claimed that 2007 would be ‘the year of free’ for digital music i.e. that ad-supported music services would make important gains. So far that hasn’t proved to be the case. Now, whilst I could try to shift the blame to the nascent services being hamstrung by the scale of label license fees I’ll instead remain foolishly optimistic about the remaining months of the year. Time for a wildcard scenario: what if Apple were to, say, respond to a newly launched Nokia offering with an ad-supported initiative? Perhaps even linked up with a European iPhone launch? Wild conjecture? Quite probably….