No, I'm not going to start charging for Hypebot. I'm calling this The Last FREE Week On Hypebot because I want this to be the last time that we debate whether or not music should sometimes, in fact quite often, should be free.
A post I wrote "Understanding The Value Of Free" reminding musicians to utilize the power of free started the heated discussion. And a follow-up post "Why Are We Still Debating Free?" continued the debate. I encourage you to join in.
But in actuality, the debate is over. As someone who has worked in this business all of my life, I appreciate fully the sweat that goes into making and marketing music. I can even say that I mostly align myself with folks that believe that it downright sucks that people stopped paying for music. But as Wired's Chris Anderson
said at SXSW:
"I'm not telling the apple to fall –
I'm just telling that the apple will fall.
That is what the laws of digital economics require
…you either compete with free or use free…".
Like it or not, most of the apples have already fallen off the music industry tree. And all this week on Hypebot, we'll explore various theories of free and how artists and labels can use free to make money.
