Trend: Free

Giving away things and content for free might be the next way to make money.

Trend Description:
Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and the upcoming book “Free” defines the Trend as “The Economics of Abundance and the Price of Zero”. There are already many things and services given away for free. Redhat and IBM both give away Linux and other software away at no cost. However, they charge for services to support the software. The current most popular business model for the Internet is advertising. Google, Yahoo, and the major broadcast networks provide an amazing information, news, entertainment content, on free, but ad supported sites. These offerings are now competing with non-profit, religious, and government institutions, like libraries. For-profit making companies are capitalizing on the power of “Free”.

Cases:

Chris Anderson: “FREE”:
“Free“ is the title of the next book by Chris Anderson. The editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Long Tail, will discuss the economics of abundance. In fact, he already listed some ideas of possible subtitles, which of course the readers of his weblog Longtail can read and discuss for free:
1) FREE: The story of a radical price (zero)
2) FREE: How $0.00 changed the world
3) FREE: How companies get rich by charging nothing
4) FREE: The economics of abundance and the marketplace without money
5) FREE: The past and future of a radical price.

Anderson is going to live by his word, as he will gave away his book for free too. Other ideas for the promotion of “Free” (which will be published around the end of 2008 by Hyperion) are:
Free MP3 version of the book for people who purchased the printed book.
The digital version of the book would be given away for free to specific devices, to ensure, that it ends up in the hands of early adopters.
An eBook version with ads would be free for everybody.
Single Pages and Chapters of the book could be published all across the Web on other sites.
Print on Demand version of the book with advertisement.

Of course it also is a great marketing campaign to offer a book with the title “Free” for free. By making materials free, authors can create audiences. And since – according to Anderson – just ten percent of all published books really make money, authors mostly write to be read. And the more they are read, they can earn money through speaking, paid writing commission, and other kinds of licensing of their ideas.

Radiohead:
There has been music given away for free before, but when the band is Radiohead, people take notice. One of the biggest is allowing fans that they can pay as much or as little as they like for the band’s new album “In Rainbows”. Since Radiohead is not longer tied to a record label, they are free to sell the album directly from their official website, release date was October 10th. They are not revealing how many downloads they have or how much people wanted to pay. Along with the free download, the album is also available as part of a collectors box, which many die-hard fans will be unable to resist (especially around Christmastime). The band is also profiting from the “free” PR they got through websites, newspapers and magazines, as well as the word-of-mouth promotion. Fans do also have to register before they can download “In Rainbows”: Dat, that could be for future marketing campaigns.

Trend Impact:
Giving away things for free is not new, but the usual freebies were more likely to end up in the trash. Now “Free” means access to things of real value. Anderson also has many other ideas to make free books possible: Some of them are: sponsored books, advertising in books or to offer rebates to people who buy the book. It is a fact that people like getting things for free. There are already many websites and organizations which offer “freecycling” instead of “recycling”, meaning that people trade things, they do not need any more, or they even offer it for free, in the hope sometimes finding something they need themselves for free. The publishing and especially the music industry are struggling anyway with their turnover. New structures are likely to be established. The winner will be the one, who created the biggest audience, and this will probably be the one, where people can get the most out of for free.

The Long Tail

Thanks to Print is Dead

Radiohead

In Rainbows

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