The music trial is open to 800,000 of the operator's customers, and will see more than 500 tracks being offered for free or half price, in return for people seeing adverts during the purchase process.
The trial will last three months, is being run by Microsoft subsidiary ScreenTonic, and the likes of Ford and Paramount Pictures are signed up to provide adverts.
But here's the thing: games appear to be next on the list, judging by the comments of Steve Ricketts, head of third party services at Orange UK, who says:
"We believe this ad-funded content model will drive adoption and usage of services, and deliver better value content to our customers. Whilst the trial is initially set for music we are also intending to test this across other content areas, such as games."
Orange isn't the only UK mobile operator looking closely at the idea of ad-supported games, but it remains to be seen whether it can persuade the three largest publishers - EA Mobile, Gameloft and Glu - to participate, since they've been lukewarm about the ad-supported model until now.
