I just came across an amazing article in Wired Magazine entitled “FREE! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” by Chris Anderson. Anderson starts with an old-world example of how Gillette started out by giving away their product (the razor handle with only a few blades) in order to eventually sell more blades and build the empire that is Gillette.
He takes that example and shows how modern-day companies like Google, Flickr, or YouTube are taking this very same idea and running their entire business based on providing free services. Of course not everything on these sites is free for everyone — Google has Ad Words that people pay for, YouTube has premium channels that companies pay for, and Flickr has it’s “Pro” account that also generates revenue, but the bottom line in all of these examples is that you give something away and are able to charge someone else to pay for what you give to the people for free.
Anderson talks about how free impacts the Movie Industry, how we are living in a world of Digital Waste, how the difference between something that costs $0.01 and $0.00 is huge, a brief paragraph concerning Zero margin cost (distributing digital music files) amongst may other ideas.
While I don’t have any concrete ideas about how this directly relates to solving the issues with music distribution and getting artists payed for their work, I do know that free is the future for information and content on the web, and that there is a viable platform here to be created for artists and musicians to benefit in some way from the models of Gillette and Google.
It is a long article, so do as I do: print it out and take a little break from the daily grind. Fill your brain with some good ole knowledge whilst you take a break from the daily grind of taking care of the things in your life that are not free.
Link to Wired article here: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
