Should music be given away free?

[RDR]

Its a tricky one thats for sure.

I think it all depends on what else people have going on, A touring/gigging artist will have more invested in the live set-up.

There are many instances where music is paid for and in big amounts. but these are one off pieces like music for adverts on commision etc etc.

It all depends on wether or not anyone regards music as intrinsically worth anything or as a vehicle to promote a brand image or the artist as a product. The recent rash of people giving things away for 'FREE' (OT i think the word FREE has much more power than the word F-U.C:K in modern day society) has hardly been FREE, there was always another option for people.

Look at princes recent giveaway in the papers, it was free to the consumer but not really free at all. Most artists in the independant sector 'enjoy' the long tail in terms of sales. Prince didnt do that. How much did he get paid by the papers for having this album given away free? Instant money. Not only that, but he exploited the long tail and gained some more fans in the process (i accept that he aliented some as well) plus the fact that if he had tried to BUY that marketing and publicity it would have been extremely expensive. The consumer accepts a free album on the premise that it is really free, and it is, the cost to them is hidden. Prince on the other hand gets rapid payment, the consumer pays HIM to publicise TO them. Look at the Radiohead and NIN jaunts recently, FREE meant giveaways, but they still made money from it. Not from the sales so much, but the publicity was MASSIVE. something they couldnt buy without spending millions.

For the independant? Well, havnt we always given away music for free in the form of Mix CDS? Isnt that what DJs are meant to do? Record pools have been around for a LONG time and did exactly that, gave away promo's to DJs so they could play them out. I think in the techno scene the problem is that who the hell is buying the music, its not the standard consumer, its the DJs and most of them i meant didnt really expect to pay for music at all. They felt that it should be free because they are 'Promoting' a certain artist. This rings true when you have a product like vinyl, hard to copy etc etc, but not MP3.

One of the side effects (IMO - like everything here else of course) is that all of a sudden the DJ jealously guarding their record collection has gone, no white labels on a CD is there? A DJ lives and dies on their tunes, but that piss and vinegar approach seems to have gone, in the endless round of circle jerk promo action.

/Rant.

EDIT: Just seen jamies comment and wanted to add a +1 for most of that. I know im trying to talk from a commercial perspective here.