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The Business of Free Music
Kiruba Shankar · Chennai (India) · Jan 30th, 2008 8:17 pm · 29 votes · 6 comments
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Victoria Shannon has a well written article in the International Herald Tribune titled "Mainstream music industry realizes the value of 'free'". It brings to light the changing scenario in the music scene that's rather fascinating. I have highlighted key points points from the article for easy reading.
Ten years ago, major music companies worldwide earned a whopping $38 billion in revenues from sales of music. In 2008, that revenue will halve to $17 billion. The reason? Well, it’s the free exchange of music over the Internet…something that all of us have done it one time or the other.
A report from Jupiter Research states that for every song that is legally bought, about 100 songs are illegally exchanged on the net. Ninety-four percent of the folks surveyed have vehemently stated that they dislike paying for music.
The music industry has realised that it’s very difficult to compete with free. So, what do they decide to do? Instead of fighting against ‘free’, they have decided to join the bandwagon.
On Last.fm, for instance, you can play a song three times before you are prompted to buy it. This allows people to sample the music and the results show that there has been an increase in the sales.
"Free is not the opposite of pay,” says Laurent Krantz, chief executive of Jamendo, a free peer-to-peer site based in Luxembourg that focuses on Creative Commons licensed music. You can voluntarily choose to give your music for free. For example, Jamison Young, an Australian artist now based in Oslo, has chosen to break his contact with a record company and is now freely giving away his music via his website and MySpace. He says by giving his music for free, it has helped it to reach a wider audience. He makes more money now by doing live concerts where people pay to attend.
RadioVerve, an Indian Internet Radio Station, encourages local musicians to put their music on their site where they play it to an audience who likes music. The audience pays nothing to listen to music. The catch? You can only listen but you can't download. The artists don't mind earning nothing out this because they get the exposure. Some have gone to cut a record label while some have got opportunities to perform at concerts. While everything is free, it interestingly leads to ways to earn money.
It’s something that the software industry that has perfected this ‘trialware’ method and now the music industry is warming up to it.
tags: chennai india culture music download cc
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