- Can you give away MP3 downloads of your music for FREE and increase your sales income?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gdyk8/In_Business_Free_For_All - BBC Radio 4 program on Free – The UK’s national business program did a very good piece on Free. Includes interviews with Chris Anderson, Kevin Kelly and James Boyd. An accompanying article is here.
- Is the business model of the future one where the customer no longer pays? Already products in the digital marketplace are being given away free, yet companies are still making profits.
Free
The internet has created a revolution for free products, says Anderson
One firm believer in this increasingly common business model is Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine.He claims the costs in the digital world are so low that both the companies and their customers are winners.
- This paper explores illegal music file-sharing activity and its effect on Australian sales of singles in the physical and digital retail markets. Using fifteen weeks of Australian Recording Industry Association weekly chart rankings of physical and digital sales, combined with a proxy for download activity derived from the popular peer-to-peer (P2P) network 'Limewire', the evidence suggests no discernible impact of download activity on legitimate sales. Whilst significant negative correlation between chart rank and download activity is observed in the digital market, once download endogeneity is purged from the model and song heterogeneity is controlled for no significant relationship remains.
- Internet music piracy has no negative effect on legitimate music sales, according to a study released today by two university researchers that contradicts the music industry's assertion that the illegal downloading of music online is taking a big bite out of its bottom line.
- Contrary to the music industry’s assertions, peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing does not have a negative affect on the legal purchasing of music, according to a study commissioned by the Canadian government ministry Industry Canada (via Kapica’s Cyberia).