Would Free Music Sell Cars?

rhfrommn writes "An opinion piece on news.com says the old method of selling music CDs is doomed and suggests the best new method is to give away the content. No more 'piracy' or 'rights management' to worry about! The author discusses ad based models, giving music away as a promotion (buy a car, get 1000 hours of music free type stuff) and other methods. All based on cheap hardware like MP3 players as the new medium to replace CD."

Comments

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get as many free hours of music as you want now. It'll be that way in the future.

Re:Too late

[Eric P. Henus]

2 words:

Ra Dio

The opposite is much better

[KDan]

Buy 1000 hours of music, get a free car!

I'm sure more people would fall for that :-)

Daniel

Re:The opposite is much better

[aengblom]

Buy 1000 hours of music, get a free car!

1000 hours * $15 is $15,000. Amazingly, it probably is actually better the original way ;-)

But would it be good?

[BitwizeGHC]

I mean would it be normal music from acts I like, or would it be "See the USA in your Chevrolet" type stuff?

I remember getting free music with a McDonald's meal once. One of those cardboard punch-out disposable phonograph records with the catchy menu jingle recorded on it. And if the class sings it successfully through to the end, you win like a lot of money or something.

Catchy, but not exactly chart-topping stuff.

Re:But would it be good?

[cdrudge]

For those who may have "forgot" it...

I want a ..........
Big Mac, Mc Blt, a Quarter-Pounder with some cheese, Fillet-o-Fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a Happy Meal, Mcnuggets, tasty golden french fries, regular and larger size and salads, chef or garden, or a chicken salad oriental, Big Big Breakfast, Egg Mcmuffin, hot hotcakes and sausage, Maybe biscuits, bacon, egg and cheese and sausage, danish, hashbrown too and for dessert hot apple pies and sundaes three varieties, A soft serve cone, three kinds of shakes, and chocolately-chip cookies and to drink a Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, an orange drink, a Sprite, A coffee, a lowfat milk also an orange juice, I love Mcdonald's good time great taste, And I get this all at one place!

I beleive the jingle was released in conjunction with a $1 million prize. If you received a copy of the jingle in your Sunday paper where the musicians made it through the entire song without messing up, you won.

BTW: Was it McBLT or McDLT....I find references to both and I can't remember...

Am I dating my self?

why?

[tiwason]

No more 'piracy' or 'rights management' to worry about!

Then why am I going to have to buy a $30k car to get my music..

This is nothing new... your still "selling" the music

I'm still paying or going through more hoops then kazaa or friends to get it.. then its not worth it.

I don't understand..

Most ridiculous thing I've heard

[L. VeGas]

Who would buy a car based on the amount of music you get with it? Everyone buys cars based on the amount of chrome it has.

---
Vin Diesel

Maybe the dumbest thing I've ever heard

[Rombuu]

This is less logical than an Iraqi press conference. So if people could then freely copy this music, why would anyone want to pay to get it in the first place to gie away with their products?

Free content for all!

[delfstrom]

I hear there's this great new wireless technology that actually sends out free music through the air. There appears to be a way of supporting it through advertising revenue, but who cares, it's live broadband music streaming.

No more tinny-sounding RealPlayer broadcasts, this is high-quality stuff we're talking about. Free content for all! And the best thing is, the end-user hardware requirements are very inexpensive. I hear it's called 'radio' or something. Apparently people are working on actually sending video images in the same way. Imagine the possibilities!

Re:Free content for all!

[ip_vjl]

... music through the air. [snip] I hear it's called 'radio' or something.

I know your post is meant as humor, but it reminded me of something I was thinking about on the way into work this morning.

I was listening to the radio and there was a song I liked - don't know the name, don't know by who. There was no DJ break at the time, and by the time there would be one, I would no longer be in the car ... so not much chance of finding out who it was.

Now *THAT* would be something that I would like ... potentially as a way of selling this new digital satellite radio crap.

When I hear a song ... I can click the 'buy this song' button on the radio. It doesn't even need to download it to the car (though I suppose it could). It could just charge me a reasonable fee (maybe 0.75 - 1.00) and make a good MP3/OGG available for download in my "account" on the site.

That way, music would become an impulse buy. Same way they leave the candy bars next to the cash register at the supermarket.

See/Hear it ... want it ... buy it. (R)
oh yeah. that would be the way.

Free music won't sell cars.

[grub]

I have gigs and gigsof MP3s but don't own a car.

Why does everyone ignore live music?

[Infonaut]

From what I've read, even the multiplatinum musicians make most of their money from live performances. I've always gone to see live acts based on their recorded work. If more recorded work were available (perhaps even for free), wouldn't that improved exposure give an artist the ability to pull in larger crowds and therefore make more money at live gigs?

I'm sure I'm missing something, but why do artists need labels any more?

Re:Why does everyone ignore live music?

[incrustwetrust]

the downside to this idea is then there are musicians like me who make music that literally cannot be reproduced live, unless you just play a rough sounding recording and look like you're actually doing something.

then again, i'm not out to make money... and neither are most people who make music like mine that i've ran into... although, being able to have my own studio would be the greatest thing ever.

hmm...

on second thought...my music HAS been used in avant-guarde performance art performed live, but that is a different thing entirely from a live show to me.

The payment plan

[arvindn]

This article goes one step ahead of slashdotters clamoring "Digital restrictions are bad. IP is untenable" and actually gives a revenue model which sounds workable to me. The important parts are:

But how will artists and their agents and lawyers get paid? This time we can turn for answers not to coal distribution, but to an industry much closer to musicians' homes: the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. ASCAP licenses, collects and redistributes music royalties from music performance venues (like radio stations, concert halls and so on) to the artists. It determines who gets paid what by polling these venues to see whose music gets played and how often.

To determine reimbursement in an MP3 player world, a small sample of users could be invited periodically to voluntarily, and anonymously share their listening history stored in the player. Then, just as in the ASCAP model, payments collected from the music player distributors (Kia, the BSO and the like) would be split among the copyright owners. No fuss, no complexity and no secret CD police.

Makes a lot of sense to me. To get this off the ground, it only takes one company to tie up with some mp3 player makers. If it succeeds, others will be quick to jump on the bandwagon and the RIAA will be left wondering what hit them.

For big acts only.

[Hayzeus]

This model really would appear to work only for the larger acts. You know, the ones that get airplay -- all 10 of them.

This wouldn't work at all for bands on smaller independent labels, other non-pop genres (jazz, blues, etc). Reads like another big step toward musical homogenization to me.

Sell convenience, not content

[defile]

The other day I found myself at CompUSA paying $40 for Red Hat. Why on earth would I pay money for that when I can get an ISO and burn it for free?

In my case, it was because I was at a datacenter and needed to reinstall the system (the vendor forgot to install it). I could've either taken a trip back home (30 minutes), downloaded and burned a CD (an hour), and taken a trip back (30 minutes), or I could drop by CompUSA and pay for a copy (20 minutes). Savings to my client by paying for software? 1.75 billable hours.

If there's any hope in selling data as a retail product, it'll be in models that completely ignore the actual data on it.

There's my case (needed it quickly), but there are many others.

Some people just want to rummage through piles of stuff, find a gem, claim a prize. That whole Hunter/Scavenger instinct is still with us, you know.

Shopping at a record store is a social activity for many people -- something that's harder to do with a real person by a computer.

There have been many times that we browsed Blockbuster Video (yes, they suck, but that's a different story) in search of a movie and ended up there an entire hour because we became so engrossed in searching (and ended up with 3 or 4 movies by the end of it). A web site can offer the content, but seldom can it recreate that experience.

The content cartel should capitalize on this, because their current business model's days are numbered.

Re:do it like the dead painters.

[Shalda]

And if you want your music to come from a Thomas Kincaid gallery, be my guest. I'd rather see the flaws in the music industry get fixed. Not that it's going to happen, but if you got the racketeering out of radio and put limits on how long artists can sign exclusive contracts with studios you'd fix nearly all the current complaints. Sure, there'd be new ones, but that's another story. :)

It's About The Cartels Profits, not the Artists

[FreeUser]

I'm sure I'm missing something, but why do artists need labels any more?

What you are missing are a few very important points that the media cartels, in their extraordinarilly disingenuous rhetoric regarding non-commerical copyright infringement by individuals, would very much like you not to notice:

• The cartels in general, and the recording industry in particular, are not interested in their artists financial well being (just read their standard recording contracts sometime, or the excellent analysis done by Courtney Love and Janis Ian). They are interested in their own profits, and while most artists make most of their money from live shows and would benefit from free music, the recording industry makes most of their profits from selling recording (in large part because they pocket the lion's share of the proceeds).
  
• There are some extraordinarilly rich artists, such as Metallica and the Zombie, excuse me, I mean Michael Jackson, that have managed to finagle contracts that, contrary to most, give them a portion of that pot. They benefit from the system enormously, and serve the aforementioned cartels by giving other artists an unreasonable dream to shoot for, a dream with which they very successfully ensnare new talent which they then milk dry and forget.
  
• It is about control, even more than money remarkably enough. This happened in the early 80's prior to MTV, where their control was so solid, and the music they released so tepid, that sales had fallen dramatically until MTV introduced an entirely new genre of music imported from Europe. Their desire to control their market absolutely stems from their cartel mindset, a mindset made possible by the monopoly entitlements their copyright priveleges extend to them and one that is difficult to overcome, even when it is working against their own bottom line. Free music would undermine that cartel, the control they wield, and fear of this sort of change will leave the cartels entrenched even if they see the possibility of a better bottom line without it. The risk simply won't be worth the benefits, to their minds, at least not until an outside group has made them all but irrelevant and decimated their business anyway, something which may not even be possible with new legislation emerging from congress and various state governments.
  

In short, if it were about the artists well being, free(dom) music and media would be a slam dunk. It benefits everyone ... except the ever-less-necessary publishers and middlemen, who run a powerful cartel and will see our every freedom destroyed before they give up or change their business model.

It is interesting that those with such entitlement mindsets feel they should be able to earn money indefinitely (at least life+70 years) for one bit of work performed sometime in the past, while the rest of us accept that, if we wish to earn money, we must continue to work each day of our lives (weekends and vacation sometimes excepted). Given the profitability of, and real value offered by, live shows one must truly wonder why an artist, much less a publisher. would think they are entitled to proceeds from anything other than their live work. Four centuries of monopoly entitlements will, alas, do that to an industry and even a culture, to the detriment of nearly everyone (a few moghuls and poster children excepted)

There's one problem - audiophiles

[Nix0n]

You can't replace the CD.

Well you can, but not with a lossy encoding scheme such as MP3. There are plenty of people out there, myself included, who simply do not like( or cannot even abide )the warbly sound of lossy compression, and would resist phasing out of high-resolution audio formats.

If anything will replace the CD, it will be SACD or DVD-A, not mp3.

I can change

[fobbman]

I'll just have to steal cars now.

The music industry won't die

[eXtro]

I don't think the recording industry itself is doomed. Their real business is marketing. They market an image or sound to the public. Some of the public buys into it and so they buy albums, posters, concert tickets and so on. Popular artists have devoted followers who will buy anything they put out. They'll buy every CD, even their "greatest hits". They'll buy any magazine their favourite artists appear in. They'll watch any TV show that they appear on. There is even a good chance that they'll buy a products not even related to their artist based on his or her endorsement. The loyal fans buy stuff regardless of whether or not it's available for free.

I have no doubt that on paper there will eventually be a point where the RIAA, or some other agency, will say that they've lost more money to piracy than they've taken in. Maybe they already say that, I don't really pay much attention to them. They will still be profitable though because losses due to piracy don't actually cost them any money from the balance sheet that matters.

There are some tangible costs associated with being the music industry, and the way they maximize their profits is by minimizing investments where they don't get a large return on their investment. This means that unless you happen to look and sound a lot like what's already selling in a given demographic you won't get signed. Bad for consumers who don't fit into whatever the music industry is currently pushing (and slowly evolving) but that's business.

So what do you do if you're an artist who can't get signed? Go independant. There's room for the independant music industry. There's probably a lot of money to be made for the first company that gets it: Give people what they want. So sell music on mp3 with optional CDs or vinyl. Don't worry about piracy, you don't lose money from that and maybe you'll make an additional sale. The artists won't get rich as the most popular RIAA artists but guess what? There's no gaurantee anywhere that you'll get rich regardless of your ambition, talent or luck.

Solving the Wrong Problem

[serutan]

The biggest flaw in this idea is that it is yet another attempt to solve the wrong problem: how to build a life support system for record companies. I wish these pundits would read and understand what musicians are saying increasingly in their writings : that the whole music piracy brouhaha is not about musicians, it's only about record companies, and that we really don't need record companies.

Most musicians by far make a living with paying gigs, not CD sales. Recording contracts are carefully structured so that all expenses come out of the artist's share, which ends up being zero. CD sales benefit musicians by giving them exposure which translates into gigs. A musician gets this same exposure whether someone buys a CD, listens to a song on the radio or downloads it from Kazaa.

Replacing the entire record industry with free distribution wouldn't deprive musicians of anything except the opportunity to let the record companies control their careers. And as an added bonus, it would mean one less source of big-money whispering into the ears of lawmakers.

Re:Free Cars.

[hpavc]

I think that insurance/finance companies will bundle cars with their services. Basically like a lease, the insurance company dolls out the car to you and you pay them a monthly fee with covers the insurance for the vehicle.

The companies would buy at large fleet discounts and offer safer vehicles.

Potentially they could use their lobby to get government to give them insentive credits on using certain better energy resources/methods that are currently stalled.

Oh yeah and they could offer free music too.