Free Music Pays Back
April 10th, 2008 | by Jose Miguel Cansado |
Last weekend while walking in a mall, I saw a record shop that was playing in their big plasma screens a live concert from Celine Dion. When I saw it I wondered who can be interested in having this DVD? I am not specially keen on Dion, so you can imagine that the idea of purchasing it was never in my mind. A couple of days later I saw a TV add of Dion’s DVD, and thought, why not downloading it with eMule. Celine Dion World Tour will be soon in town, so why not see what the show is about.
Clearly I would have never bought the DVD in the record store. Yet, the curiosity might have made me spend one hour of my time to watch the downloaded concert.
What would Celine Dion prefer? Shouldn’t she prefer that I watch her downloaded show for free, and maybe get interested to go to her concert?
Last.fm says that free music leads to increase sales of songs: Free music encourages sales
“Last.fm’s on-demand service, which lets users play any particular song, only allows a user to stream a song in full three times. After which, they’re prompted to purchase the track through one of the affiliate services. [...] Since the service launched, Last.fm users are purchasing 66% more albums than before.”
With the huge amount of information we are exposed to and the increasing fight for attention, the music industry is short-sighted not to see that it is already a privilege that we lend our ears and our time to listen to an artist. Artists should encourage to have their music available to as much people as possible, including those who would have never bought their music in the first place.
