The remainder of this week’s readings were mostly concerned with the new world of Free. Anderson states the following in chapter 8 of The Long Tail:
“So bottom line: Human attention is more expandable than money. The primary effect of the Long Tail is to shift our taste toward niches, but to the extent we’re more satisfied by what we’re finding, we may well consume more of it. We just won’t necessarily pay a lot more for the privilege.”
And he’s right. The digital landscape has made it acceptable and even an expectation for things online to be free of charge. Based on the Anderson and Coulton readings, I personally think that the biggest factor that has led to this notion is the lack of a physical product. Why should people feel obligated to pay for something that isn’t even tangible?
Coulton gave a great example of this in his post. He basically said that a person wouldn’t be likely to go into an Apple store and steal a Macbook. BUT if you could somehow download a MacBook online for free, even he would do it.
And even the industries have taken note of this. They are in the process of trying to figure out how to continue making money from content that exists in this Free world. It seems like advertising-supported business models will continue to exist; however, in no way does that limit advertisers to come up with new ways to market products to consumers.
An interesting anecdote from The Long Tail was the Radiohead case where the band allowed a pay-what-you-can download of one of its albums. Surprisingly, the album was the band’s top selling album. A lot of people downloaded the album for free, but some people paid up to $20 to support the band. The average amount paid was $6.
A similar case involving an author was also examined. The author allowed a free download of his new book for four weeks. In this instance, the book became a best seller, as people who enjoyed reading some of the digital version wanted to have a physical copy of the book. This also goes back to the idea of paying for a physical item.
So in this world of Free, the big question remains: how do industries keep making money? I think experimentation is key here. I think ads will persist, but I have no doubt that some groundbreaking business model will appear in the near future.
I think more artist are starting to realize that need to preform live. I am guilty of illegally downloading music but i try to make up for that by going to shows to see the artist live as well buying a t-shirt while I am there. Playing a live show only increases your fan base because your fans will drag their friends to your show and hopefully they will become fans too and you also doubled a ticket sell. Artist are playing back to back shows too like Jay Z who recently played a three night show at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Yesterday in class, Terrence said that he wouldn’t take music out of Best Buy because that was stealing. But on the other hand—>he’ll download it illegally without thinking twice. He obviously doesn’t feel obligated to pay for something that’s not tangible, lol. So how do industries keep making money? Eye don’t know but it’s going to take creativity and outside the box thinking.