Is It Better To *Require* Or *Request* Something In Return For Free Content?
from the the-debate-goes-on dept
Over at Music Think Tank there's a blog post provocatively titled: Why Music Should Never Be Given Away For "Free", which brings up a point I've heard multiple times from various music industry marketers (many of whom I generally agree with). They say it is okay to give away music without a monetary transaction taking place, but instead you should demand something else in return. In this post, he suggests requiring an email address, a retweet or a Facebook share in order to get free music.I definitely understand the general rationale for this line of thinking, but I'm afraid that people are going too far with it, and it's actually harming the value of free music in some cases. Obviously, it's great if you can get something (monetarily or not) in exchange for the music, but putting up a barrier can also be harmful. First of all, if it's truly a brand new fan who hasn't heard your work, they might not be willing to commit to you in that way. Especially when it comes to Tweeting or Facebooking an artist. If I don't know the artist, there's no way I'm mentioning them to all of the people who follow me on various social networks. On the flip side, when I do see friends who make those kinds of Tweets, they feel like spam. They're not at all convincing and they don't feel authentic. They feel forced. Honestly, when I see people post social networking messages in exchange for free tracks, it actually makes me less interested in the musical act, because I feel like they need to beg for attention, rather than letting the fans organically give them attention.
Finally, part of the reason the whole "free music" world exploded the way it did was because of the massive simplicity and lack of friction in music sharing, which made music discovery and promotion much more seamless and easy. Putting required friction back into the process seems like a mistake, and will likely just drive fans (or potential fans) either to other artists or back to the same file sharing systems that remove that friction. That doesn't help anyone.
So rather than requiring an explicit exchange, it always seems a hell of a lot more effective to offer the content for free, but ask for the exchange as a voluntary setup: "If you like these songs, tell your friends or sign up for our mailing list" or something like that. This way it's not forced. It's not inauthentic. It's not friction. It's about trusting the listeners, rather than trying to force them to act in a certain way.
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Filed Under: business models, economics, email, fans, free, music, social media, transactions
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The general concept of word of mouth promotion of music worked the same way (listening to music at a friend's house). I'm not sure how since they have become obsessed with fighting piracy they decided that these things never played any real role and are not only expendable but actually harmful, but I think they are wrong.
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Why are the children so clueless?
Yes, there is free music out there. Check Jamendo or Radio Free Hipster. It's a great way to get exposure without any commitments.
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Sigh, if only there was a similarly popular repository for free eBooks that could be used to promote hardcopy books in a PoD format....
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Seriously, I'm going through the FAQ for Smash Words right now, and I'll be checking out their style guide next. I have a book that I think may do better as a self published eBook than anything mainstream, so look for it soon (I wonder if they'll let me publish under the author name: Dark Helmet ;))....
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By the by, I'd be interested in reading this book of yours.
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Or feel free to ask mike for my email address and I'll be happy to email you a more recent work. And then you can put it up on bittorrent and I can pretend to get slightly mad about it while it circulates ;)
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http://www.conspiracyfiction.blogspot.com/
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http://librivox.org/
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The ads if there were any were to support costs of running the radio station, not paid to musicians.
Of course there are many other forms of free music, but the point I was trying to make is that it felt free to the customers, not that it must actually be free in every sense of the word. Customers will not invest in something blindly. Having the posibility of overhearing an advertisement is not investment. I could potentially see an advertisement anywhere. Forcing someone to do something is an investment.
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But the collection agencies (especially in the UK) surely get paid.
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This is an argument that can only exist through the lack of understanding of the nuances of the word "free".
Something can be free to the producer (costs no money to produce) or free to the consumer (costs no money to listen to) or both.
The "free" music discussed was clearly in the latter sense. I can turn on the radio and listen without paying anything.
Your argument is a strawman which hinges on conflating the two meanings. He didn't say the music was free to produce. He said it was free to consume.
I guess calling for critical thinking is too much to ask for from TAM...
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plus, how did the radio cost you to buy? the power to run it?
there is a whole lot of free that isnt free, you are just not seeing the costs.
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Absurdism aside, though, that's not what most people think of when they think of "free."
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And you be wrong about music not being free, from the perspective of people listening it is free, they don't actually have to pay money if it wasn't nobody would listen.
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Never listened to a busker?
Music is sometimes free - and sometimes it is a negative - ie you would pay to stop it.
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However, it's not okay when they want your email for this. They are basically saying - we absolutely will not give you something for free - we require something in return. They take your email (seemingly harmless to the unaware) and sign you up for email solicitations or sell your email to some other company to do exactly that.
it's not a welcome concept and is a contribution to the mass of spam people get.
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The free market naturally solves these things.
I like the idea of an email address for music. The artist can send a follow-up email after a week asking for feedback, as well as saying that if you like what you heard, please take time to pimp them on the social networking site(s) of the your choice.
I don't know if it would be sustainable, but who knows?
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Which seems pretty reasonable.
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Not true - really really not true.
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Brad sucks is the worst of the better artists on jamendo.
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You mean the "Brad Sucks" who did the demo track that is bundled with the great REAPER DAW (check it out, musicians and "others") software?
Brad Sucks RULES!!!!
In a really, really annoying way.
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Thank You Tech Dirt!
Please feel free to reach out to me via Twitter (@miccontrol) if you have any feed back for me (good or bad) about the article.
Thank you again for the reference!
Jon Ostrow
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Your comment "these three options are not meant to be set in stone, rather a jumping off point" seems to directly contractict the title of your post: Why Music Should Never Be Given Away For "Free".
Is this another case where an overzelous editor decided to change your title in the hopes of grabbing more attention?
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... I also just want to thank you for continuing this conversation with me. I wrote the article so that I could talk to people about this and so that others could express their opinions. Its nice having a conversation with someone who doesn't immediately call me a jackass because I have a conflicting opinion.
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It's just that the concept of ownership is sort of an abstract concept and not a tangible good to be exchanging for. When you are talking about something that is in infinite supply that you already have unlimited access to, I don't see how "ownership" is anything more than a label. It is like telling me I can eat the cake, but I can't "own it" unless I give you something. It doesn't compute to me :).
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" but it is still bound to that streaming player."
Well thats what I was getting at with the limiting to certain devices stuff. The trouble I see with that is that the devices that can adapt to play streaming music. I think we will find as technology advances that the concept of listening vs. copying is a red herring.
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You do know that there are many free browser plugins that allow anyone to record and save streaming audio (video versions of these also exist) ???
That said, most streams are pretty low quality audio.
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Besides is bad security practice to give away any real information over the internet.
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This seems to be unfounded speculation. What is it about this person that makes them unlikely to become a fan? Perhaps they don't like non-personal email and don't want to give a fake address. Maybe they don't use social networking at all.
If you require something from them they don't want to give, there's no way they'll become a fan. The artist should carefully consider whether that's worth it, when people who are really interested in the band will often sign up for the newsletter anyway, and will tell their friends about it anyway.
And just so you feel more comfortable: you're such a jackass! ;-)
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Why it needs to be anything else?
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If you have to give anything to the one who has the content, it is not free.
That is, even if you have to rent your own jet airplane from an unrelated third party to go to the location where you can get the content, but does not have to give anything to the one who has the content, it is still free (but very inconvenient). But if you have to give anything to the one with the content, even if it is just telling your name, it is not free.
Being less extreme, investing your time, your bandwidth, your electricity, etc, does not make it not free. Investing your time (etc.) in a way specifically prescribed by the one with the content makes it not free.
But this is taking the argument to the "splitting hairs" point, so I will stop now.
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A little story
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Well Bubba I Know That One
*NOT FREE* Or *FREE*
SIMPLE!
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The one or two times I actually gave an e-mail rather than just clicking "Close Tab", it was a Mailinator disposable one that I checked once for the download link and then never checked again. I also have a facility for generating self-expiring e-mails on my private domain (mixed in with the permanent ones) to side-step blocks on such services.
If they're not willing to give me my music for free, there are plenty of other artists who will. (and plenty of sites like ModArchive, FuMP, and OCRemix with either direct download links or DownloadHelper-vulnerable streaming widgets)
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I think the music industry is really going about this the wrong way. Instead of debating free services, you should focus more efforts on providing great alternatives to Pirating music. The majority of the industry still uses pirate sites and if they can convert the major, then it starts to make a lot more sense (especially in an advertising sense).
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Earning revenue with free digital music
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