to free, or not to free?
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 4:11 pm by Jared
For almost a year now we’ve been encouraging free downloads of Metaphorically Yours [vol 1] (and more recently [vol 2]), directly from our site. It was meant to be an experiment, something to help edge our music into an already saturated marketplace, and get the record in as many hands (or ipods) as possible while embracing the fact that music lives in a free marketplace now anyway – so bring on the torrents.
Once we decided to use torrents as part of a distribution method our song Nearly was included on the What.cd Vol 3 user compilation. It was pretty cool. About 30,000 people downloaded the comp, and for the first time our site was suddenly getting hits from all over the world. From Europe to Africa to Japan – it definitely exposed us to a new listenership and much broader audience. Nearly is still our most listened to track on last.fm, and we’ve gotten a lot of enthusiastic correspondence directly related to the What.cd download.
Then, the british netlabel CXCR6 took on Metaphorically Yours [vol 1] and spread it all over the torrentsphere, which also garnered us some new listeners.
And that was about it. A cool experience, but not a career making or game changing one. And something nagged at me through the whole process. While I was grateful for the exposure and open communication that torrents and free downloading brought, I was also left to wonder if the inherent ‘free-ness’ of the music lowered its value in any way.
It’s easy for people like Trent Reznor and Thom Yorke to release music for free or pay what you will, and get meaningful results. Trent Reznor can tour on a free record, and make plenty of money from the tour – the cost of creating the record is meaningless. But how does a band with a smaller foundation and infrastructure utilize technology the way that well established acts can? Or the larger question: how can a small band make any money from producing music, and do independent musicians deserve a livable wage?
On the other hand, when someone like Bono accuses the current technology of reducing music to ‘tap water’, I can’t help but think of our experience with What.cd. Not just ten years ago it would have been next to impossible for a band like us to get heard internationally without a record company, management, and a PR firm. The internet turns the entire industry on its face, and offers the possibility of exposure without corporate backing and industry radio approval.
So it’s tough to figure out how we should deliver our music to the people, and the truth is that there is no right answer. For now, we’ve decided to put away our free pages, and encourage people to purchase our music from our webstore, which we’ll be adding a download section to soon. We’ll be giving away demos and MP3’s periodically on this blog, and there will still be lots of ways for people to get our music for free, but ultimately I’d like to try and make a living as a musician, and although I know I’m in the wrong industry to try and make a living in, every little bit helps… right?
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