Cheaper Than Free ⇥

Ethan Diamond, co-founder of Bandcamp:

A few months ago, we began tracking the starting point of every sale that happens on Bandcamp. In the course of looking at the data (which we’re using to help us plan out what to do next), we’ve noticed something awesome: every day, fans are buying music that they specifically set out to get for free.

He provides several examples of people purchasing music that they found on Bandcamp through searches for torrents, Mediafire links, and the like. This is phenomenal for these independent artists.

In a somewhat similar story, I recently discovered just how good iTunes movie rentals are. Gary Hustwit’s latest documentary Urbanized is still in theatres, but one can hop on iTunes and rent it for two days in HD for $8, less than the cost of a single movie ticket. I can’t think of anything better in this age of ever-crappier theatre experiences.

This is symptomatic of what so many record labels and movie studios are having trouble understanding, and why they’re slowly losing relevancy. If you make something easy for consumers at a reasonable price, people will pay for it. If you load it up with DRM, charge $25 for it and make it a challenge, people are going to take a minute to check their local torrent sites and that sale will be lost. If you make paying for music and movies as easy as Bandcamp and iTunes do, people will buy your content, provided the content is good, of course.