The New Free
The biggest idea I came out of SxSW with this year was that free is dead. Over. Overdone. We killed it. Because so much is free online, we expect it; where’s the value in that? It seems to me that the folks in Austin weren’t quite on this one yet… even SxSWi keynote speakers Guy Kawasaki and Chris Anderson seemed slow to the punch (Guy’s big bright idea for Chris’s new book “Free,” out this July, was to give it away for free. HELLO? Been there. Done that. Have they NOT notice that the music industry has already beaten this model into the ground?)
Sure, giving stuff away for free is nice. People like it. And these days, you have to do it just to keep up with the Joneses. But keeping up doesn’t get you ahead. And obviously free doesn’t exactly pay the bills unless you’re Trent Reznor or Radiohead, i.e. established. So what about the little guy? Good question.
Things to think about:
1. What’s the effectiveness of your free? To lure in new fans? To solidify current fans?
2. What’s the strategy of your free? Is your free creative? Why do I want it over someone else’s?
3. What’s the bottom line of your free? To get me to pay for something else?
Free can’t be JUST free anymore. And how the hell can you beat free? So that’s my question:
What’s the new free?
Thinking that the answer is in fact the opposite of free. The complete opposite. Fucking expensive.
Take the new food for example (thanks Erik!). $5 Kashi anyone? $4 local, farm-raised, cage-free eggs? $8 Pom Wonderful? $5 rice milk? Are we (me included) out of our minds? Perhaps. But clearly, somehow those foodies did it. We’re willing to pay ridiculously high prices for incredible quality. What’s more is we often drive way out of our way to get it (for most of us, Whole Foods, etc. isn’t usually down the road). Why? We value life for one, fueling our bodies with the best we can to feel healthy, younger, whatever. But also it’s just plain delicious, so there’s definitely an aesthetic association. And for sure, it’s COOL. I love walking into Whole Foods with my eco-conscious shopping basket and looking at all the pretty colors and all the pretty people. I do. It’s a group I want to be long to. But the best part is getting home, unpacking everything, unwrapping and putting it away. I love touching it. I love how it looks in the refrigerator and on the shelves. It looks nice.
Hmmmmm…. what else makes you feel good, feeds the senses, makes you willing to make an effort to get it, makes you feel cool and the need for inclusion? YOUR FAVORITE BAND.
So what’s missing? Well, if it’s digital, you can’t TOUCH it. And that’s a bummer. There’s a lot of pleasure out of simply owning something, holding it. Is that the missing element? Making music TACTILE again?
I think so. And apparently Tim Easton does as well. Bless him.
xo
Tags: CUT THROUGH THE NOISE, KATE BRADLEY, OUTLANDOS MUSIC, Radiohead, Tim Easton, Trent Reznor —
4/13/09
Categories: CUT THROUGH THE NOISE • KATE BRADLEY • OUTLANDOS MUSIC
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57 Responses to “The New Free”
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Thanks Kate…my new cd will be $49.95 and damn proud of it.
peace,
chad
Great piece! I’ve been thinking about this topic for a long time. I’m with you; Free is out. Too many musicians are playing gigs for ‘exposure’ and giving away their product. But if it’s all about the packaging, then we’re out of the music business and into pop-art and graphic design. The need for music is different than the need for cool looking record sleeves. The latter is certainly a tried and true revenue source for artists – think about t-shirt sales, posters, etc. I recall talking to members of a million selling band a few years ago who were surviving on t-shirt sales while waiting for the revenue from their record.
I’d hate to think that Shepard Fairey is the new model for a musician, much as I love his work. I think there’s a glut of great music right now. Who do you know who doesn’t have thousands of songs on their iPod already? The burning question for me is how to get people to pay more for the music itself.
The good news is the internet.
The bad news is the internet.
There is such a bottomless pit of music
and much of it bad, and so many American Idol
wanna-bes and their dog putting out cds that it
is cheapening and rendering music worthless in
much the same way the housing glut did.
Same principle, cost and demand..and too much
product lessens demand.
The same desperate “to be discovered” musicians
and bands that play at the local club for free
just to be seen, and bring down the market for
working musicians, are the same ones who desperatley
give away their cds and music downloads for free.
It is nothing short of musical prostitution.
What the internet has done is make everyone famous for 15 minutes just as Andy Warhol predicted, and given
stage to hacks and no talent phonies who wouldn’t know how to tour or survive in the real world of music but create a digital impression that they are someone, an artist to be reckoned with..hell, anyone can create an online illusuion.
It was next to impossible to have your music taken seriously before the internet as your tape or cd
would sit neath a pile on the A&R person’s desk.
Now serious music is floating out there in a bottomless pit of music, and much of it from amatures with their day jobs to fall back on and pretending they are rock stars where in real life they are anything but.
So in reality as music over populates the internet it cheapens it all, as there are too many choices.
There was a time when an artist paid the dues and lived the life and amassed a legend and great stories to tell and write about. Take Johnny Cash for example. Why are we so enamored with the man and his legend?
Exactly that..THE LEGEND. He lived the hard life and survived the pain and the heartbreaks and wallowed through the dirt and blood and we embraced those songs(stories) and today he is larger than life and rightfully so.
What do we have today in comparison?
College kids recording cds in their dorm rooms and
17 year old barbie doll hacks like Taylor Swift
telling us about her latest boyfriend troubles.
And after 50 years, we’ve forgotten about all the others who might have had Johnny Cash’s career, but failed for the lack of an outlet for their work. Not to diminish one of the great careers in music; the old system worked as a much stricter filter. For Cash to be heard, someone (ie. Sam Phillips) had to believe in his ability to reach an audience. Phillips had to make an investment in pressing the records, so he then had a stake in promoting them.
Now, an aspiring Cash records in his basement on a notebook computer. He prints a CD, financed by his credit card. No one does quality control, no one says, ‘You’re not ready yet, John’ and no one has a stake in the record.
I think you’ve got it right that it’s a supply and demand problem. But it’s not “musical prostitution” – prostitutes get paid. Think about jeans. Good old blue jeans. You can buy them for $30, but somehow there’s a robust market in $300 jeans that look damn near the same. There’s a slight difference in quality – enough to create demand. And no one seems to be willing to sell that quality for less, so the price stays high.
An indy artist sells a record on itunes for $10. Bob Dylan sells a record on itunes for $10. Would there really be a market for $300 designer jeans if you could get a pair of 1947 Levis for $300? Would Dylan have had the opportunity to reach his potential if he’d spent ten years playing coffeshops for tips?
How do we get the wannabee Cash to stay in his basement and leave a vacuum in the marketplace thus creating the demand that is necessary for the next real Cash to earn a living wage? In today’s market, Johnny Cash would probably still be selling appliances.
Answers:
For major releases – pay top-dollar for mastering and packaging so the audio-sensual tactile is rewarding.
For interim stuff (holiday cd, etc) – tunecore it
Have an amazing live show and really know your instrument
Have a lot of music-related skills – teach, produce, engineer
Perhaps the idea of serious semi-pro needs to be glamorized, though I have to admit it really isn’t. Oh well, back to music…
[...] The New Free | outlandos music: blog Fascinating post on the "limits of free" (h/t Allison Fine): "The biggest idea I came out of SxSW with this year was that free is dead. Over. Overdone. We killed it. Because so much is free online, we expect it; where’s the value in that?" (tags: socialmedia music) [...]
Dear Kate,
Free music is just to gather Free attention.
Six Red Carpets are a band from Italy and they know their music has no chance to get somewhere form here, because the Italian music scene is a bit different than the music we play and the language we’ve chosen to communicate is … just far.
Choices.
Do Six red Carpets want to grow as a band?
Do Six red Carpets want to get in touch with an audience?
Do Six red Carpets want to get in touch with a label in order to live of the music they make?
So they have to work for a year and a half on an album and give it for free (download it on http://www.sixredcarpets.com , if you can).
They have to work on a video and give it for free, sign dozen of radios and distributors’ penniless “royalties agreement” for free and play around Europe for free (almost)
I don’t know if it will pay and if this strategy will lead us to a turning point, but i can’t find another way to be listened by people.
I’m thankful all the times a blogger or a webzine or a U.S. daughter od a U.S. president writes an article about us, all the times a radio plays our tunes, all the times that i know i’m getting in touch with someone i don’t know and probably i’ll never meet .
I am thankful because i fell free to express myself, to write something that is going to be listened.
Do I want this “give it for free” to last forever? No, because i want to live of this (but believe me, i don’t want to became an overpaid rock star)…but until then i will be grateful for any word that people write me and for any clapping of hand i get on a (free) live show.
To answer your question , i don’t know why should you want my free music over someone else’s.
) , but the truth is that I’m thankful for all he/she is going to teach me , and for the fact he/she spent a while to listen to what the Six Red Carpets have done.
But that’s music, isn’t it?
I mean, i receive dozens of mails everyday of people who just congratulate for what we’ve done but I know for sure that many other people listened to our work and didn’t like it . Someone sometimes writes me about something he/she didn’t like of our songs.
I always answer it’s Majlco’s fault (our guitar player
Finally, I don’t mean to give something for free NOW to ask for something LATER, we never did something like that and after all this time it’s a shame to read that someone is frightened by “the free stuff”. It’s really stupid.
As I wrote before, i don’t know if it will pay and if this strategy will lead us to a turning point but i can’t consider any other way to get in touch with people like you.
For example.
A smile.
Stephen Mills – Six Red Carpets
http://www.sixredcarpets.com
All that free produces is a bunch of pretty good amateurs. Hobbyists and charity cases, if you will. If you wish to be neither, then be professional and charge for your goods and services. Or trade for goods and services of equal value. A lot of consumers would rather have a shoddier product for free. Fine. Fuck ‘em. Because a lot of other consumers are willing to pay a reasonable price for passionate professionalism.
I think about “free” a lot (the quotes are because it’s almost never truly free–sites place cookies, grab data, ask for email addresses, these things are valuable).
Is free dead? No, but free without discretion may be. The strange thing about “free” is that it’s still finite, and demand is infinite, especially for music. Got 100 gigs of music? Soon you’ll want more. And people will pay for more: iTunes is the #1 music store in the world, that’s proof.
So I suspect it’s not free that’s so important, but PRESENCE–findability. I’m glad to say, for the stores, TuneCore provides that, at a price so reasonable it’s practically free.
Thanks for the mention.
–Peter
peter@tunecore.com
Interesting. I wont take “free’ anymore if I get asked for my email address. Rarely. OHHHHHHHH so rarely.
Neither will I wade through 75 inches of breathless bonus lists added to my purchase. I think the author is a schmuck for not putting the info in the original, and 20 minutes of my time wading through this muck is worth more than their product.
Very wise post Kate. The phenomenon you talk about is hitting every industry at every level. Look at newspapers, why should I pay for a print edition if I can get the online one for free?
Tactile music? What about Guitar Hero or Rock Band?? Isn’t it true that AeroSmith made more money from their Guitar Hero game than from albums?
Very interesting point of view!
@ David Vida:
“All that free produces is a bunch of pretty good amateurs. Hobbyists and charity cases, if you will.”
I hope you’re prepared for a future where cheaper and easier recording technology and distribution produces — horrors! — a contingent of “hobbyists” who can produce better-than-pretty-good, professional quality product and don’t have a need to profit from it at all.
Actually, that future is here now.
It’s funny, because free is dead for a number of reasons (IMO):
1. Free is overdone as a creative approach. Therefore, it’s no longer a differentiator – and if you can’t be unique by being free, then it’s time for something else.
2. Advertising online is dead (and ads are often tied to free). Loads of “free” business models weren’t/aren’t actually free (for the seller/giver, anyway). Ad revenue is used to offset loss was from the giveaway, and secondary sales fill in the rest (i.e. someone buying something else that actually IS for sale).
I think #2 is fascinating, personally.
[...] by itself is no longer enough to guarantee much of anything. (Here’s Kate’s take, which I just [...]
Yes as an unknown in the music world I have struggled with the free music. It is a way to get some people’s attention. Getting them to buy is still difficult online, easier at gigs.
That being said I am offering a free Mother’s Day download of a piece of mine Matka Boska. Go to http://www.PatrickSmithMusic.com for details.
I work with an indie electronic music record label. When I scout around on myspace for talent I am always saddened when I find good artists with tons of free download buttons and links to multiple ‘albums’ and so on for free download. I have to assume you just want to share because sometimes I just can’t figure out what other goal you might have. I know a few people who are quite happy to make and release music for free and dont want to get involved with money.
I have to assume that they just want to make music and put it online through a website or net label and are not interested in marketing their music beyond the Internet.
I just hope people don’t think that free releases or net labels are going to get you exposure that will then get you signed.
These free releases would make it difficult to sign them if they did want to be signed and would become road blocks to current and future sales.
As a label spends time and money promoting the artist, they would be inadvertently promoting these free albums.
Someone hears our release of your music, then googles you, goes to your myspace page and downloads your free releases. Good for you. Not for us as a business needs to make money.
Having 20 side projects with free releases doesn’t help either.
I don’t think anything is wrong with free as long as the product given away is actually good. About 90% of the music I’ve been given away for free could be classified as awful, leaving me with the impression “I wouldn’t even pick this up if it were free.” On the other hand, free items which I have liked I ended up telling 100 people about it’s good attributes. In other words, you can’t polish a turd by giving it away for free….or conversely by making it too expensive. If you overcharge for something and it’s crap that’s just going to piss of a consumer even more because they now have a £50 frisbee with music on it instead of a free one.
[...] by itself is no longer enough to guarantee much of anything. (Here’s Kate’s take, which I just [...]
It sounds to me like you don’t understand “free” as a business model. You should probably read more before you talk about it.
Paying money for being healthy and paying money for music that you like based on your mood, i think are not even comparable. I am not sure how you could relate the expensive food items to expensive music (not sure if there exists such music). Art and music don’t have a price, they are up to the fan’s will. Food on the other hand has a minimum base value, anything on top is profit, create artificial demand and so on. But i think this article proposes a very flawed analysis of a business model that might screw some young and upcoming musicians. And all those young musicians please remember that you are rewarded for your art and performance never paid for your services. You get to do what you like and getting paid for that is a bonus. And no recording company label maker is remembered like the artist featured by them. He might have money but never the satisfaction of being an artist. That’s my two cents. And for fuck’s sake don’t commercialize music more than it already is.
Drew:
There is an interesting story you should know about.
Not all artists giving their music away fail to make it in the money making world of electronica indies.
Case in point: IDM artist WISP released free albums in various net labels for free, until he released a proper album in the now-defunct and acclaimed label Sublight.
After Sublight folded, WISP was signed to one of the most important electronica labels: UK’s Warp, home of Squarepusher and many others.
This proves that quality artists with good music has a good change to finding wide exposure, whether is given away or not.
[...] found these very interesting blog articles from Seth Godin and outlandosmusic.com arguing against the idea that starting artists / entrepreneurs should give their product / music [...]
The idea that starting artists / entrepreneurs should give their product / music away just to be heard among a sea of competitors, and the fact that the idea of giving things away for free has been overdone and it doesn’t have the same effect it used to have.
I think this is true, but there is a catch.
There are quite a few electronica netlabels giving away hundreds of free albums nobody seems to care about, because.. their music is FREE.. so it probably isn’t worth much, right?
Well, this is not always the case, some of the music on a few netlabels is very good, sometimes even better than some of the stuff released on “real” labels. The problem is that netlabels do not have any money to promote artists, mail CDs, create videos, etc, so most people will never hear of these artists.
Let’s face it, “real” labels don’t need to go out and find artists.. they don’t even have enough time to listen to all the demos they receive!
Most labels don’t even accept demos anymore!
why should they waste their time to hunt down music that is being given away for free?
The catch is this: sometimes, there are artists whose quality of music is so good, that they are able to make the jump from “free” netlabel to real indie labels: Case in point: Electronica Artist WISP who went from releasing free music on netlabels, to releasing music on the Sublight label and now is signed to WARP.
And while WISP’s example may be one in a million, it shows that anything is possible when you have talent and love for what you do.
http://enigmafon.com/2009/05/09/can-artists-giving-free-music-away-ever-make-it/
This is relevant to other industries besides the music biz. As a blogger in the “beta stage,” I am learning that, now with feeds, Google Reader, Facebook feed, email updates, etc., there seems to be so many ways for people to partake in a blog’s juicy content, without even visiting the blog itself.
For those whose primary purpose is “branding” it is perhaps less of an issue; for those who are imagining advertising as one day being their primary source of revenue, it is perplexing. I mean, the content is already free! Now people are viewing it off-site?
Will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I’ll be asking the asking the experts about this.
~Dane
http://www.BionicButler.com
“improving personal productivity at home”
@Dane – I wouldn’t worry too much about people using RSS readers to read your blog. I think most people still visit your blog if the article is worth it, because let’s face it, RSS readers are boring to look at, it’s little better than teletext. Myself, I use Google Reader to scan the contents of my favourite blogs everyday but if I like the first paragraph – or the title – of a new post, I open it in a new tab so I always read blog posts “in situ”.
@ENGM
Thanks for the information. I hear what you are saying and it is good food for thought.
Great post, Kate
I agree, expensive to create a cult of desire and belonging, i.e. $$ = “some people WILL be excluded”
people who belong like the fact some don’t/won’t/can’t afford to belong
Tribes.
Tim M
As a listener / purchaser of music, I would pay for a ‘recommended’ collection – someone to give their advice on what new music is good. Like different profiles of folks (the profile I would follow might be… new rock, funky, world music, etc.) If the ‘label’ isn’t performing a role in the new model, and the audience cannot differentiate what is good (I don’t have the time to find and review new performers – I don’t even know where to look), then the ‘good’ performers should ‘sign’ (or sign up) with reviewers / compilers who only recommend good stuff. I would pay for that. Is there something like that available yet? Please post – I would really like to know.
Atlanta, what do you think about this? It’s free
:
http://outlandosmusic.com/DailyDose/dailydose.html
Seriously. Feedback wanted and welcome.
kate@outlandosmusic.com
[...] by itself is no longer enough to guarantee much of anything. (Here’s Kate’s take, which I just [...]
Diminishing returns, folks. The more of it out there, the less we value it. And our brains aren’t helping us out here, either. For sound, the brain looks for patterns that it finds familiar and then that’s what we end up “liking.” ‘Quality’ becomes hard to pin-point under that regime, because it is so tied to what noises are out there most frequently.
If ‘quality’ worked as a music industry strategy, we’d all be listening to classical or jazz, instead of rock and pop.
The only sense experience that works right now is the “hanging out at the bar with friends” experience or the “making out with your gf/bf while song x is playing in the background experience.” But that’s still all free or tied to some other product (beer, satin sheets, etc.).
The idea that you should know WHY you are giving something away for free is key. What are you working towards that will be helped by a freebie giveaway?
[...] by itself is no longer enough to guarantee much of anything. (Here’s Kate’s take, which I just [...]
That’s great for those who can afford it. And as I speak the divide between the rich and poor continues to widen.
[...] Free cannot be JUST free anymore, tulis Kate Bradley. Ingat, di pasar Freeconomic, Anda juga akan bersaing dengan Trent Reznor dan Radiohead. So, you need to beat Free. [...]
Bruce Houghton of Hypebot wrote, “Free music has value if it sparks action, to contribute, to belong, to share, to buy. Next time think before giving your music away”
As elizabeth above stated, one should know why you are giving away something, with a clear end goal.
There is intrinsic value in music that can be realized otherwise one is giving away the shop. I have covered this in more detail in the article “Reconciling The Value Of Music” here: http://www.theglobaloutpost.com/archives/10
I started giving my music away (MP3 Only) about a year ago… I have had some small success with people buying from some of the digital outlets such as Amazon, CD Baby, etc.
However for the better quality tracks, I charge for those i.e. CD Quality.
I don’t know if this strategy will work either, however I do know that people are listening… and I believe that is the point of my music.
Charlie
http://www.cworshipmusic.com
MP3 Format (32 Songs)
[...] of monetizing it later is a non-functional way to go to market. If you don’t believe me read what Kate has to say. This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 2:16 pm. You can follow any responses to [...]
[...] I read this blog post, and I thought it was amazing…It talks about everyone’s favorite word “Free”…It is not working as good as before, since lots of free stuff,around us, especially online.. Check it out click here� [...]
As a software developer, I have experienced this “free” problem for a long time now (25+ years). There are a number of articles on http://www.techdirt.com/ that might be of interest to you — they explain some of the reasons why making ones and zeroes into something non-free is problematic.
The key thesis they repeat on that website (and in particular when talking about music) is that “free” goods online are in effect infitely abundant, and you can’t really make them non-free.
However, you *can* use those free, infinite goods to market scarce goods like concerts, merchandise, customized offerings, even fandom: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090405/1659514392.shtml
Maybe this is well-known in the music industry already, but it doesn’t seem like it from my perch on the sidelines.
[...] what should you do instead? Offer value? How much value? One way is to present premium value for high dollar. But is that the best option for your small [...]
Free is not all bad. Indiscriminate “free” is what is killing the music industry. And not every musician wants to be signed to a label. I’m a new film composer and have been a musician for 15 years and I’m starting to get my music heard – and get paid for it.
It’s true, I offer free downloads of “certain types” of my music. Since I write songs and film music, they’re different audiences and therefore, different opportunities to promote myself. I don’t want to get signed. I want to make some money with my music – however that happens. But I will not work for free, just like most graphic designers, burger flippers, or salespeople will not work for free. It’s not just the service you get from composers and musicians – the music could potentially last forever.
Don’t “sell yourself free”. You’re only hurting yourself if you want to eventually make money.
[...] Free isn’t free and the race to the bottom is getting more crowded every day. He links to Katie (some language NSFW ) who says the new “free” should be [expletive deleted] [...]
As i wrote in my blog, the whole concept of free has a stigma to it.. like musicians playing for free on the street for pocket change.
A lot of artists think that by just putting their free music out there they are going to gather thousands of fans among a sea of thousands of artists giving their music for free.
Why would anyone pay for mp3 tracks that they can download from you for FREE?
Do what Charlie Hamilton (two posts above) did: make the effort of selling higher quality audio tracks (FLAC) in your website, so whoever buys your tracks gets more than a cheesy MP3 that can be downloaded for free.
As Kevin Kelly (www.kk.org) wrote in his brilliant article “Better Than Free”:
“When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.”
[...] The new free is effing expensive Post from Outlandos Music. [...]
i couldn’t agree more with everything that you’ve said in this article.
but just so you know, you can get your rice milk way cheaper at Trader Joes.
[...] out. Once free loses it’s novelty, quality is going to win out. As Kate Bradley puts it, the “new free” is going to be “the opposite of free,” something so good you’d be willing to buy it at a [...]
This is an issue I’ve ranted about since Napster in the 1990′s. I have now given up on it. Here’s the problem: our audience and the perception of quality. Fellow musicians, I know this is going to be hard to hear…but…your audience can’t “hear” quality like we can. The truth is that 70%+ of people are simply not audio-centric. Furthermore, my experience is that, with the exception of true audiophiles (mostly musicians, and former musicians), people just don’t care about audio quality. iTunes and the like have proven that people prefer convenience and portability over audio quality every time.
Don’t kid yourselves that spending lots of money on mastering will help you sell more CDs. The “Fucking Expensive” model only works when people perceive the benefits of the expensive product to be superior to cheaper substitutes, period. Problem is, to the average fan, the benefits of a major label CD and a guerilla indie CD are the same. Hence, you can buy both Tom Petty and Num-Nuts Band for the same $10.
The search for a workable music business model continues…
[...] then do we take free to the next level? Seth and others seem to think that the next iteration of free is paying people to use free things. As the world becomes [...]