10 Reasons Why Your Music Should Be Free
March 23rd, 2008
Happy Easter my peeps!
1. Recorded music is the most important marketing material to drive awareness.
2. Digitally, 1 copy is the same as 1,000,000.
3. Free is the last, best way to compete for attention.
4. How much do you want to fight the world’s decreasing attention span?
5. When you give someone something, (subconsciously) they are in your debt. (Hint: use that leverage.)
6. More listens = more fans.
7. Relinquishing control (aka “opening up”) increases your chances of building community. (see SDKs, Linux, Ruby/Rails - software people have been hip to this for years!)
8. Prince did it. He makes more money than you. 
9. If you don’t do it, the business WILL pass you by.
10. Free is the best way to build TRUST - and it’s ALL about trust. Ignore at your peril.
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March 27th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Prince didn’t do it, he SOLD the album to a newspaper, who paid him a hell of a lot more than he’d have made from the record by releasing it. He also used it as leverage to get people to buy concert tickets - Value Added. Not the same as ‘free’.
I’d say that your music should ultimately cost something, but it doesn’t need to be money. :o)
March 27th, 2008 at 6:37 am
As a v. quick follow up, it’s also spurious to use Radiohead/The Charlatans/NIN as examples of ‘free’ music, because the column inches they receive for doing it are worth at least as much as they lost in the deal. The coverage that Radiohead got for ‘giving away’ their album (which I haven’t got - wasn’t worth the download time to me as I’m not a fan) would’ve cost them MILLIONS as ad space. Same for NIN - a Trent Reznor instrumental record was 4 or 5th page news in the music press. It suddenly became the most blogged about music event of the year so far when he gave it away, and did all the incremental upscaling of options. And made a million as a result.
We probably a) won’t get the column inches, so there’s no resultant advertising payoff that translates to ticket sales, and b) almost certainly don’t have the kind of audience that will pay $$$ for the multi-disc set, or the means to record enough material, video, photos, t-shirts to supply that kind of demand…
So we need to think a little more cleverly than that…
March 27th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Re:Prince
I’m not talking about the Daily Mail giveaway - I’m talking about the NPG club. Prince has been giving music away for years as incentive for monetizing his fanclub.
Yes, consumers still place value on recorded works, but it will all change as that space is being replaced by other physical goods. It has to. Fans need to OWN or COLLECT in some way. The fan/artist relationship can’t be all ephemeral but I have my doubts that the album will be that binky for much longer.
Re: Radiohead, et. all
I agree! BUT you or I can not hold ourselves to the same metrics. These are trailblazers we’re talking about. My examples are usually best practices once thinking has changed/stabilized.
Giving it away may not get you any press - on the contrary, I believe it will just wind up to be a ubiquitous practice. But those who get hip to it early may stand a chance of attracting a little attention.
And I’m all for thinking more cleverly, and beyond just these points.
I feel I must say that I”m not necessarily promoting these changes as much as I am predicting them. If given the opportunity to perfect my art or force change for a whole industry, I’ll stick to my bass. But you have to recognize change especially when the current is already pulling you down the river.