Moby Discovers Value Of Free
Moby is the latest in a long line of artists to discover that “free” does not mean “worthless.”
The electronic artist told Bob Lefsetz of the Lefsetz Letter that his latest single – which is available for free download on his site and has been for over two months – nearly hit the top of the iTunes charts when it was released.
That is, people are still paying to purchase his music even though they can download it for free. Legally.
Other artists have seen this happen as well. Nine Inch Nails released its album Ghosts I-IV last November under a Creative Commons license, meaning you could download it from any number of sites – again, completely legally and completely free. The album grossed over $1.6 million in its first week and was ranked the best-selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon MP3.
Even independent artist Corey Smith has seen the value of free. His songs are available to purchase on iTunes and to download for free on his own site. Last summer, his manager tried an experiment. They pulled his free tracks off his own site. His iTunes sales actually went down.
A growing number of people don’t believe these examples mean anything for the truly independent musician. Artists like Moby and NIN – or Radiohead, who successfully used a “pay what you want” model for their 2007 album “In Rainbows” – already have a sizeable fan base thanks to the money and time spent by major record labels. NIN could release blank sheets of paper and make money. Artists like Corey Smith are the exception among independent musicians; most simply cannot afford to cut out a major revenue stream.
These people have a valid point. I would say at the very least that these examples disprove the opposite point – that it is impossible to make money from music given away for free.
More importantly however, there are many artists out there who would likely still be in obscurity had they not allowed people to sample their music for free. Hypebot is currently compiling a list of artists who have been successful without the aid of a major record label, and without a doubt, the vast majority on the list have practiced giving away their music for increased popularity, more tickets sold at live shows, and more ancillary merchandise sold.
Before the internet, this practice was not even questioned: it was called radio. Yet when the exact same thing is translated to the digital world – allowing thousands of people to hear your music for nothing – many artists still resist the idea (even though it is far cheaper for a musician to post a song online than it is to go the traditional route, press up physical albums, and ship them to radio stations for nothing).
Author Chris Anderson makes the case that embracing “free” is one of the few ways to thrive in the digital economy in his new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” Yet business models built around “free” are not a radical concept – they have been around for hundreds of years. In my own lifetime, I’ve witnessed the growth of the bottled water industry – over $11 billion a year in the US alone – for something that falls from the sky and is piped into nearly every home in the country.
Independent musicians nowadays shouldn’t be afraid of the concept of “free.” They should instead learn what Moby, NIN, and other artists (and the bottled water industry) have learned in order to succeed in the music commerce frontier.
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