The Value of Free
Artists and companies are queuing up to hand out free CDs, DVDs and books. But with so much stuff being given away, is culture becoming devalued?
Prince has done it. Most of the national newspapers seem to do it every day.
Give stuff away for free, that is. And not just any old thing. Quality stuff you'd pay good money for in a shop.
The latest cultural philanthropists are Radiohead, who will release their next album as a digital download. In an unusual move for a major band, fans are being allowed to pay what they like. Even bids as low as a single penny - plus a 45p transaction fee - are accepted.
Other popular artists - like Prince and the Charlatans - are giving away their albums.
Outside the music industry, rival media groups are slugging it out for a share of the growing free newspaper market. Londoners can avail themselves of a free weekly sport magazine and the latest venture in this vein is a free men's magazine, distributed nationally to commuters.
Items being given away is the result of changing economics. The stratospheric rise in internet advertising as well as old-media phenomena like newspaper circulation battles, means "content" is increasingly seen as a tool to be used in a battle to obtain money for other things rather than just as an object for sale.
Terrestrial television stations in the UK - such as the BBC and Channel 4 - are even getting in on the act. Downloads of selected TV programmes are offered free after broadcast, although of course in the BBC's case the downloader has already paid for them in the form of the licence fee.
THE FREEBIE REVOLUTION
78.3 million CDs were given away with newspapers and magazines in 2006
It's estimated that during the first quarter of 2006 as many DVDs were given away as sold through official channels.
Free books can be downloaded online - Google offers 10,000 of them
Along with the rise of illegal filesharing over the last decade, the growth of free content raises the possibility that there has been a sea change in the attitude of the consumer to the items of culture they hold in their hands.
Go back a few hundred years and the typical book was an object of extraordinary cost and rarity, where the value of the book itself was bound up with the importance of the information. Now Google gives them away for nothing.
Those who are behind the give-aways paint a picture of a win-win situation. Artists reach a wider audience, newspaper and magazine sales rise and the public gets something for nothing. But when the cost of an item is taken away is its cultural significance affected?
Power of commitment
Some commentators are pointing to a deeper potential malaise and saying there has been a change in the relationship between consumers and culture.
Philosopher Julian Baggini says it all comes down to one thing - commitment.
"When we pay for something we are showing commitment in a very practical way. We put something of ourselves - in this case money - into whatever it is we want. And by paying for it, we are proving to ourselves that we value it."
Good music is like a diamonds - and if diamonds were everywhere and free they'd be worth less
Matt Phillips, BPI spokesman
That goes for events, as well as music, art and literature. At the Festival of Ideas earlier this year a lot of free-entry events were more sparsely attended, compared to the events you had to pay for says Mr Baggini.
"People thought because a particular event was free, it wasn't worth putting themselves out for. In the same way, people who do consultancy work are always advised to charge a lot. The thinking is that having a high financial value creates the perception that something has real value."
The same principle applies to music, he says.
"We'd like to think that a piece of music has value in itself, that we like it because of what it is. But in reality economic factors do influence how we perceive things. The danger is that having not put the commitment in, you run the risk that you don't get as much out."
Unhappy choices
Other experts warn of an associated danger - that as cheap-and-available culture floods the market people will literally be spoilt for choice.
A thousand years ago you could only have listened to the minstrels that played in your valley, 50 years ago you could only listen to the records that were marketed in your country. Now, with 160GB MP3 players and digital downloading technology improving, you can own vast selections of music in your pocket.
"Research shows that when you choose from a very large set of alternatives, whatever you choose will be less valuable to you - even if you choose well," says Professor Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: why more is less.
"This is partly because even if you have chosen x, so you'll be thinking about y - did I make the right choice? This makes you unhappy."
Professor Schwartz shares the fears about the lack of consumer commitment.
"With so much cheap and free music out there I don't believe people are listening as seriously as they used to. There is some music that you have to learn to like: it takes repeated listening. In the future I can't see that happening any more."
For the proselytisers, the digital age is taking culture back to its roots - something controlled by people rather than big corporations.
But for those representing UK record companies free music is a problem.
"When you are competing with free there are inevitably going to be problems. The revenue from recording is now considerably smaller than it was," Matt Phillips of the BPI says.
And he said too many freebies inevitably diminished the perceived value of music.
"Good music is like a diamonds - and if diamonds were everywhere and free they'd be worth less."
But the cult of the giveaway seems unlikely to abate, and the cheerleaders of cheap and the foes of free seem set to be locked in battle for the foreseeable future.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7024728.stm)