Hey Aodan, no I haven’t read that – I’m a poor enough reader to be honest. I rarely read these days, it’s terrible.

I will check it out though.

Yeah, there’s a lot to be said for free, but there are areas where it just doesn’t make sense too.

For example it annoys me to hear people say that musicians should embrace free and make money from touring, and yet who doesn’t give out about the price of gig tickets?

The time energy and effort that goes into making a (good) album is incredible – why should we accept that music should be free just because at the moment we can’t control piracy?

And yes, I know I sound horribly capitalist in saying music shouldn’t be free – but don’t get me wrong, free music would be great but it would then be likely to be always one guy and his guitar who has some other job to actually support him.

Another example would be the whole newspaper debate – I realise the issues plaguing the newspaper industry are highly complex, but I do feel that some newspapers took down the infamous paywall for no good reason other than that the internet frenzy was around free information at the time – but they had no plan in place to generate revenue.

I remember reading that the New York Times (I think it was) was on target with their revenue targets but decided to remove the paywall in favour of potentially higher income from online advertising on free content – but online advertising by it’s nature means that to be successful means driving your traffic away from your site…

It made no sense to me at the time, and now as Gladwell points out the Wall Street Journal is doing very well with it’s paywall.

Phew – I didn’t mean to write such a long comment… probably should have just written another blog post! :D

July 3rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm by Frank Prendergast

I think by and large we are in agreement, the question for me being whether we should accept free where the market demands it, even for example where that market has been founded on an unsustainable model.

Gladwell mentions of Anderson’s book that he says:

[Musicians]should stop complaining, and capitalize on the added exposure that piracy provides by making money through touring, merchandise sales, and ‘yes, the sale of some of [their] music to people who still want CDs or prefer to buy their music online.’

I agree with you 100% that the main concern should be how we can position what we do for maximum effect in this economy, but I don’t think that free should be embraced in a fatalistic manner wherever it crops up.

There are interesting cases popping up in the music industry where bands or musicians are leveraging on their loyal fan base to sell their music – the infamous Radiohead experiment, and the direct-to-fan sale of the David Byrne/Brian Eno album.

In both cases Free was used – in Radiohead’s case, you could pay from 0 to whatever it was and in the case of Byrne/Eno the first song was free and then a week later you could buy the album.

However both cases involved buying the album, recognising that the loyalty of their fans would ensure an income, albeit using the free economy as a marketing tool.

While an element of the music market expects music for free, the musicians mentioned above have realised their true fans value, and will pay for, the music.

It should be noted that these artists have existing large fan bases to work from but yes, these artists have positioned themselves for maximum effect as you say.

And perhaps this is Anderson advocates, until I read the book I can’t say for sure – but it sounds like Anderson thinks that the music industry should accept piracy and move on. That, I can’t agree with.

July 7th, 2009 at 1:09 pm by Frank Prendergast

I must get my hands on it soon, it sounds from your description like there might more depth to the book than some of his critics give him credit for.

August 20th, 2009 at 2:19 pm by Frank Prendergast