Free music philosophies in today’s world

There exists a school of thought in favor of some amount of free music in today’s world. Most of the arguments point towards crating a user base which can be used to generate revenue by peddling other products, an offshoot of the Grateful Dead model earlier discussed.

One of the arguments is towards crating a presence in markets where the average consumption of that kind of music is very low. This is somewhat similar to the spread of software, through piracy, in India and China which contributed to an economic boom, gave Microsoft good brand presence and defined a nice market for commercial software in companies and government offices. In the case of music, this would work by creating a culture and hence a demand for that kind of music. A lot of fusion and world music has gone around the world in this fashion.

Another model involves giving out low quality ad-infested music for free so as to have the consumers come back to buy the higher quality versions. This, along with streaming samples, has been tried by various players with varying success.

These models can’t make money out of giving ALL music to ALL consumers free of cost. Several subscription services are working towards such a business model and most believe that the solution lies in an advertising model which can generate enough revenue to make it profitable. Selling secondary goods (beyond merely advertising) may also work but someone is yet to come up with products whose sale can support such a model.