Coldplay have become the latest band to make the news for giving away their creations, gratis, over the interweb. Joining an elite that is fast becomming a who’s who of music, the lads have managed to drum up a great deal of attention through this now tried and tested platform for spreading the word of an album release. In the first 24 hours of making the track available at coldplay.com around 600,000 downloads were processed. While it is indeed a great model on which a successful band can generate a good deal of interest from, it now seems as though such tactics could be to the detriment of recorded music in general.
The free-music ventures are often given the go-ahead as they’re usually on a digital (minimum cost) medium and equate to a loss-leader – where the raised interest for the band has significant impact on gig ticket, and consequently merchandise sales at live gigs. However, from an industry that is fast trying to paint the picture that music should be paid for, cashing in on the short-term profits of a great marketing technique is doing nothing for their cause in the long-run. A precedent is being set with the consumer under false pretenses, a free-music ideal that is becoming perceived as an established form of release. Further still, why, the consumer may ask, is the industry complaining about their peer-2-peer usage and illegal file-sharing when the big suits and acts themselves are giving their hard work away for free anyway.
My questions of this marketing stunt are further exemplified by the lack of compatibility to upcoming artists. It is certainly the case that breaking an artist can be helped through leaking tracks onto peer-2-peer and bitTorrent communities, getting their name bounded about, however the investment into new acts must recoup at some level otherwise it is not worth the initial risk. In short, giving away your single for free can only really work if you are already established; it’s monetary loss weighing against the gained capitol of promotion for other income streams – such as live gigs. However as the larger labels and acts – the taste-makers – start to use this as a solid form of promotion it’s value as such will only decrease, while the concept of legitimate free music to the consumer will ensure that the acquisition of such through illegitimate means doesn’t seem so bad. After-all, (and I can hear the internal monologue) “all these other bands are giving their music away for free and they’re doing fine so if I download this album here it’s not so bad”.
Certainly the idea of, at some point, opening your music up as an artist for the public to obtain free of charge is a nice, and certainly not an entirely detrimental idea. But only if approached with some sort of long-term appreciation and consideration to the music distribution model as a whole. Films, I believe can stand as a good example of this. In the first instance the film is screened in cinemas where you pay for the experience before it is later aired on television to the un-paying population. Releasing music with all the bells and whistles attached, solid-state, before giving away the bare-bones mp3s is one option amongst many. Certainly it is a ripe time for the consumer, but a balance must be met to ensure the industry, and more importantly the artists, can continue to provide the listener with the music they love.
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