The Price of Free

            Unfortunately last night I received an email from Mr. Strand having to cancel our meeting today. As the end of the financial year is coming up on Tuesday, the need to finish tax returns understandably took priority.

            I decided to continue with the next chapter of my book “The Price of Everything” which discussed the “Price of Free”. The section uses multiple examples from Napster, a hotly debated free downloading music site to; what is the title of another of my senior project books – “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The most interesting thing learnt was about an experiment a British alternative band by the name of Radiohead. In October of 2007 they released their new album In Rainbows asking fans to pay whatever they chose to download. If they wanted they could get it for free. More than a million fans downloaded the album within the first month and of these six in ten paid nothing. Several more download the album from peer-to-peer services that offer fans the ability to share their music online, rather than from Radiohead’s free Website. The band made $2.26 per album from the 38% who choose to pay for it. They were allowed to keep all the profits and not have to give a share to the record label. When the high-quality version went on sale a few months later, it put the album at the top of both the American and British charts. It remained in the United States charts for fifty-two weeks, which is longer than any other albums of the bands. By October 2008, In Rainbows sold more than 3 million copies, including 100,000 special boxed sets that retailed at $80 each.

            I believe that this experiment shows the potential of the Internet. Radiohead displayed that the information economy could revolutionize capitalism by allowing creators to make a living while giving away their creation for free. This new type of economy might require people to radically change their approach to property. This album experiment demonstrated that if creators would free themselves of the capitalistic shackles represented by record labels, Hollywood studios and other representatives of corporate greed that siphoned off a big slice of their revenues, this new paradigm could work out for everybody.