Should you give music away for free?

For those of you that are struggling with the question of giving away music for free, here are some good thoughts from both sides.

http://blog.discmakers.com/2010/03/should-you-give-your-music-away-the-great-debate/

I am on the side of giving it away.  I suppose it would be nice if that was not necessary. 

But it does no good to gripe about intellectual property theft, illegal downloads, and such.  The reality is that is where we are as a society, and that includes Christian society.  The internet has helped perpetuate a belief system that even top-notch soft products should be free.

Musicians will have to start viewing their music not as a product but rather as advertising for their product.  What is their product?  That is a tough one, but most experts tend to agree that the obvious product will be concerts, and musicians will have to generate their living from ticket sales.

This is a problem of course for Christian musicians.  For example, I do concerts almost entirely in churches, and have never done a ticketed event (where people were charged to come).  Actually, only a tiny percentage of Christian concerts are ticketed.

Unless that changes, I think that the number of Christian artists will probably dwindle rapidly because probably 95% of them depend solely on music sales for revenue.  Few will spend tens of thousands of dollars to produce music that they have to give away when they have no alternative source of revenue from their music.

I personally do not think that weeding out the number of Christian artists is a bad thing. (even if I am one of them!)  I am concerned about what might happen to the quality of the music though.  When even the best artists are cutting corners on production because of dwindling CD sales, that is not a good sign.

Some will flourish because recorded music was never their main thing anyway.  For example, the Christian colleges can still produce high quality music (if they choose to) because their music attracts new students.  Writers of music will be able to use their CDs to sell their print music.  Educators can use their CDs to sell their educational materials. 

If you are a Christian musician that wants to make a living in music, you need to figure out how to complete this sentence: I am going to give away my music in order to sell ___.

If you can’t fill in the blank, you may have a rough future ahead of you.  And complaining about the internet and file sharing is not going to help one bit.