
Evidence Mount That Free Music is Unfeasible - ALee
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/music-too-expensive-to-be-free-too-free-to-be-expensive/
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jacquesm
That's a very misleading title, giving away music from the big labels trying
to make money on it through a different route and keeping up your royalty
payments is tough.

But 'free music' is definitely feasible, it just won't be 'big label' music.

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RyanMcGreal
How's thesixtyone.com doing? For indie bands looking to reach an audience, it
seems like free music could work out very well.

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jacquesm
they look to be doing pretty good:

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thesixtyone.com>

Maybe IUMA has finally found a valid successor. If IUMA was started today I
think it would have a much better chance at survival, bandwidth now costs a
very small fraction of what it was in their heydays.

What a waste the way that ended by the way.

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mikebo
They don't look so good compared to imeem.com, mog.com, last.fm, ilike.com
though. I don't see flocks of people giving up on mainstream music.

Your point that free music is feasible for some music is valid, but I'm not
sure it's that important if it's relegated to niche status.

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jacquesm
Imeem.com peaked over a year ago and has since just been declining, last.fm is
pretty steady.

Mog.com is relatively steady and ilike is going up fairly fast but that may
have to do with their recent acquisition.

The fact that thesixtyone is doing this under their own power and with indie
music is very impressive, of course it could be that they will never be as big
as their 'big label' brothers but so far they've been doing pretty good.

And 400% growth per year essentially without marketing is not too bad either.
They've got about 60,000 uniques daily now, I would not be surprised if they
manage to push that to a quarter million by the end of next year.

And why would people have to give up on mainstream music in order to listen to
indie music, there is plenty of room for both.

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mikebo
I'm not out to knock thesixtyone.com -- my point was just that I don't see a
big change in consumer preferences occurring when it comes to music.
thesixtyone.com and others might be able to be successful as a niche product,
but most consumers are looking to access major label content. Even if every
new song from here on out was released in a threesixtyone.com model there is
still a lot of demand for older content.

That puts music startups in a tricky situation. Either you don't provide
access to that mainstream content, provide it legally w/ label deals that
hopefully don't cripple your business, or you offer it illegally. According to
the wired article the ad supported streams model seems to be dying, which
means music subs must be coming back for companies that choose the legal
model.

I'm personally not excited about this and hope they so do badly labels give ad
supported another try.

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jacquesm
I think it is going to be a similar pattern as open source vs closed source,
it will take time to get momentum, but I think that in the long term it's
going to be unstoppable.

As soon as people figure out a way to do a 'redhat' with music it will
accelerate a lot. So far most of those efforts have fizzled, but with so many
people trying to start fires it is only a matter of time before someone will
succeed.

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psranga
I'm fine with paying for music, but I consider ~$20 for a CD outrageous, and
$1 for an MP3 on the high side. :) Lala.com lets me listen for 10c/song;
that's a price I'm willing to pay.

I like the lala.com model the best. 10 cents to stream a song an unlimited
number of times. No fixed monthly fees. Joined a couple of weeks ago; so far,
I'm loving it. (If you want to "own your bits", you can get a DRM-free MP3 for
an additional 79c).

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djehuty
Free music is infeasible? Tell that to people jamming with their friends, or
buskers, or radio.

Is it feasible for free music to make big money for the majors? Different
question, but we know the answer: "who cares?"

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nfnaaron
_Free music is infeasible? Tell that to people jamming with their friends_

Yes, absolutely. Would be nice if more people made their own music.

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feverishaaron
It seems the only unfeasible thing here is the amount the labels charge for
the streaming companies to license the music.

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CSunday
First of all, Great Post!

Free music is totally feasible, it only depends on the artist's approach to
pursuing revnue (ie: freeing themselves from the lables.) Another thing is ad-
supported alone is not feasible; neither is selling T-shirts...As long as
people still want to store mp3 files on their music players, there's no reason
why people won't want to pay for them. (Only if their demands are met)

To mikebo: "I don't see flocks of people giving up on mainstream music."

Music is music, mainstream music is no sweeter than indie music; they just
have more marketing behind them. If the same marketing opportunities that are
provided to mainstream music can be accessed by indie musicians, people will
discover that Indie music is actually worth listening to.

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sli
Tsk tsk, Wired. You should have consulted Z., from your own Geek Dad column,
when this article was being written.

