Call me greedy, but I’m having trouble understanding how people benefit from giving stuff away for free. Like the author who publishes “e-books.” How does that pay the bills? One time while traveling, I stumbled upon an author who was doing a book signing for her book (“West of the Equator”) and I was really interested in buying the book because had heard of a different book with the same general story line but from a much earlier time period. I didn’t have any cash on me because I was at the beach, so she just gave me a copy of the book. I read it, enjoyed it, and made my mom read it. Other than that, I haven’t done a lot of promoting. It is kind of similar with the music industry, I think that’s why Sony did what they did in trying to protect cd’s from being copied. But now we have ITunes and similar programs where you can download songs for fairly cheap. Also, MySpace allowing people to put songs on their profiles, is kind of an example of free advertisement and promotion by sharing for free. Personally, when I want to explore new music, I search MySpace music by the genre I’m in the mood for.
About Blogging:
I remember when I used to just look at people’s homepages. But now with the ease of blogging, anyone can put whatever they want out there. I used to think that blogs were all about self-indulgence and that people should just buy a journal or go to therapy. But now, I think that blogs have evolved. I’m ok with blogging with a purpose. For example, browsing people’s travel blogs is a way to get ideas about where and what to visit. In my future travels, I will probably try to do one of my own.
The Net Generation:
Tapscott (author 1) is a Canadian who is around 60 years old. (I found this on Wikipedia). I wonder how he did research about the “Net Geneartion. Is he analyzing from the outside or did he get an inside perspective? Either way, I think he is fairly accurate. I consider myself part of the net generation. I think that the best part is that we have questions and we find a way to answer them. Because we are “skeptical of authority” and “scrutinizers,” it pushes emergence and evolution even faster. Instead of complaining about things we change them. There are positives, but how are we going to run the world? How will our internet and social networking expertise affect the way we run businesses? What happens when we oversee the IT people who make sure employees are not accessing MySpace or Facebook from work computers? It’s a little scary.
8 comments:
With regards to music, many small upstart bands encourage downloading as it gets their name out there. Many established stars also encourage downloading as they don't work on commission, but rather get paid for the album upfront. The performer makes his/her money from concerts,and spreading the music for free will encourage concert sales. I sometimes wonder if the performer is the one who actaully uploads the music prior to a CD's release. I think you would see a change in attitude if the star was paid a commission for each record they sold.
Now I'm curious as to the trends in concert ticket sales. I want to say that they are decreasing. I remember a few years ago, it was either Ozzfest or the Vans Warped Tour that was dangerously close to not materializing (or maybe it didn't). Also, what are the implications for ticket prices? It seems like a fine line. If musicians jack up the prices too much, people won't go. But, they need to produce more revenue to make up for the loss in record sales.
Artists make no money from record sales. They get paid to make a record. Look at Radiohead. They produced their latest album themselves and are posting it for free onl-line. This is the furture of the industry.
I don't know if I am sold on the Radiohead idea being the future of the industry. What if you do not like going to concerts but like a band or artist's music? I don't know a whole lot about the music industry but I don't see that working for bands that are not already established.
It is wierd how Tapscott was able to get it pretty close to the majority of n-geners being a sixty something year old guy. I wonder who did his research or how he obtained the information.
I agree that the Radiohead method would not work for bands that are just starting out. It's easier to be creative when you are already well established.
And as for Tapscott, I'm sure he either has n-gen. research assistants or grandkids.
Regarding music I think for the start ups who would release their music directly to the public through info hi-way would make much more money than if they would through traditional record labels. Because they eliminate the middle men costs and raw material costs, such as CDs and also shipping cost. If it is put in the net in MP3 format it costs next to nothing to reproduce and ship.
This way even if very few pay whatever they feel like, the music producers would make a huge amounts of money due to enormous reach of the net
I thought the same thing about giving things away for free. If you're giving something away that you're passionate about then distributing it can be its own reward, but eventually everyone wants to make money.
As far as the music industry is concerned, concerts were not intended originally to make money on their own but to promote albums and increase sales. They now make money on their own, but that was an evolution of the industry and consumers. I think we can look for something similar to happen with downloadable music. If consumers like what they download or hear for free on Myspace, they will be more likely to buy either the song or the album (in some form).
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