College students facing financial strains and student debt do not always have the funds to pay for downloadable songs. With the new app Trebel, they don’t have to.

Trebel, takes a new approach to providing an on-the-go listening experience by connecting mobile users to free, downloadable content in exchange for advertisement consumption.

Users gain “virtual currency” through exposure to banner and video ads on the app as they search, preview and download music. They can then use the “coins” they accumulate to purchase music downloads.

“Trebel is for the student that can least afford to pay but wants complete control over what they listen to,” M&M Media’s chief of product, Corey Jones, said. “We’re legitimizing the free download experience in a way that’s never been done.”

Trebel recently graduated from the development stage to the smartphones of students at a select number of college campuses, including SIUC. The interface and concept was designed by millennials, for millennials — as the parent company, M&M Media, Inc., states — to provide a free and legal way for cash-strapped students to get their music.

While some services such as Spotify and Pandora have helped reduce illegal downloading, they have not eradicated music piracy altogether. Creating a new, accessible service for millenials to enjoy music legally was one of the reasons CEO of M&M Media, Gary Mekikian, decided to start this project with his two daughters.

“When you listen to music, we make sure that that revenue is being used to pay the artist,” Mekikian said.

Mekikian received a patent for the technology in 2012 and the company partnered with a few major and indie record labels in 2013 to help kickstart Trebel. 

Trebel is a library of music catered to interests and tastes, with items that can be sorted and filtered by genre, mood or situation. Users can connect to and follow others who have similar interests, reside nearby or attend the same university. 

Many of the features in the app’s interface were designed and suggested by some of the company’s more than 200 college and high school-aged developers.

The app is advertisement heavy, but that is the idea. More ads means more money, and more money means more music. The company expects Trebel to reach more than 3,000 campuses and 30,000 high schools by the end of 2016.

When seeking out college campuses to launch his new app, Mekikian found that SIUC’s student body is both diverse and social media-savvy — two of the criterion he was searching for.

“We want to develop long-term relationships with students who understand the value in what we are doing,” he said. 

Bill Lukitsch can be contacted at [email protected] or on Twitter @Bill_LukitschDE.