Selling Music in a World of Free Media

On Saturday, two dozen MC101s (and one intrepid blogger) went on the Los Angeles Conservancy's Broadway Theater Tour. We saw theaters that have been converted into various unlikely things, including the consumer electronics store pictured here.

Once upon a time, students drank out of drinking fountains. It was a point of pride to know which drinking fountain had the highest spout and coldest water. And if the water from a fountain tasted like rust, well, we just avoided it.

Somewhere along the line, young people, old people and pretty much everyone else turned away from the free water in drinking fountains and instead bought bottled water. Today, the drinking fountains at Glendale College and elsewhere are rarely used.

I think about that when I think about the problems the recording industry is having with trying to sell music in a world where young people are used to downloading it for free. Today's medianote is from a Yahoo! News story about the ideas that recording industry executives have about getting young people to pay for music once more.

How hard can it be to sell recorded music to a group of people who are willing to buy water?

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #8