Giving content away for free

Advertisers give content away for ‘free’, as they assume that by giving you content you want to watch and spend time with makes you feel better towards them and means you consider their product the next time you want to buy something. The ‘free’ content includes all TV programmes on a commercial channel as well as stuff on the web that is supported by ads. But books and music have not traditionally been ad supported, so were rarely free, the physical goods always being charged for. But the rise of the web, that great big copying machine, means the music and the words can easily shared and so the music and publishing industry attempt to stop the tide.

But not all creators are like that and on Monday, you could find new content from two trailblazers. First is Nine Inch Nails, who are again giving away an album, this time Slip. Second is Cory Doctorow, who gives away electronic copies of his book Little Brother. Both are being given away under a CC licence. As Cory says:

For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science fiction sell half a million copies — in a world where 175,000 attend the San Diego Comic Con alone, you’ve got to figure that most of the people who “like science fiction” (and related geeky stuff like comics, games, Linux, and so on) just don’t really buy books. I’m more interested in getting more of that wider audience into the tent than making sure that everyone who’s in the tent bought a ticket to be there.

Both creators think that by getting content out there, they can get more people to buy the product and buy other things they are involved in. NIN release the album Slip as a CD in July, Doctorow’s book is out there already (well, sort of. It is in the US, but not in the UK, which is why I could not find it!)

But does this have an impact on advertisers? I think so, both positive and negative. There could be a chance that creators who want to share their works for free may consider sponsorship from brands, in the same way TV does at the moment. There could also be the chance that if content is being distributed in this way, that even more people expect to see stuff without ads attached, tarnishing the expectations around stuff that is currently supported.