

Music is a service, not a product - wumi

Look at Facebook or Myspace, how many people do you see complaining that those companies are worth billions of dollars? They just keep on using it.<p>The killer idea for music (and I feel for e-books as well) will be this: give the music away for free with (or without) DRM technology.<p>The money maker -- on the product, which doesn't make much money for artists anyways, will be selling advertising, but the real money maker for artists is touring anyways.<p>By giving away their music for free the artist will achieve three things:<p>1. Increasing their fan base by making the music much more accessible<p>2. Possibly make money by selling ads -- If LinkinPark, who is now independent, were to run ads on their website and then give away their music for free, you don't think that would generate ads -- imagine if Radiohead's web page would have had ads how much money they could have made when they released their music for "pay what it's worth."<p>3. Get your service out thereX again, music is NOT a product, it is a service. Look at the figures for Music Tours and see how they are rising, people will pay for this service because they want to hear music live, but if they already paid hundreds for their music player (you used to get a music player for cheap when it was CD's and Tapes) , why they should pay again for the music.<p>People are still not understanding the internet-- you have to give a reason for people to pay: people use Itunes not because they want to pay for music, but because it is so easy to put it on their Ipod.<p>They are paying for the ease-of-use, not really music as a product
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BristolStoolMan
Sure, it's a service. And for good service, you leave a tip. Don't just leave
it up to ads - tip the musician directly whenever possible. For musicians: get
your paypal button up there!

