Does “Free Music” = “Disposable Music”?

I love free music! Who doesn’t? And lately some big names in the music biz have been exploring alternative revenue and distribution models for their artistic endeavours. Translated this means that users have been able to download new music over the Internet at little or no cost.

Radiohead set the ball rolling in October last year when they announced that their latest album “In Rainbows” would be available to download at whatever price the user decides! Official sales figures have never been released, but this tactic appears to have worked. Sales figures of 1.2 million copies have been suggested, and with an average price per download of just over the £1 mark, the maths speaks for itself. And this is without distribution or retails costs - just pure profit (minus the relatively small website hosting and bandwidth costs).

Other acts watched with with interest and other started experimenting, including Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Reznor has always been vocal about the virtues of using technology to create and distribute music. In March, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV, an four-disc instrumental album, and the first volume, Ghosts I, was available free over the net, along with full digital and physical releases. Reznor has used this model before when he worked with Saul Williams.

Now, I bought In Rainbows for £1 on release, and I downloaded Ghosts I. I’ve been a fan of Radiohead since The Bends so I was quite looking forward to hearing their new album (even though I find their modern stuff less accessible - OK Computer is still a masterpiece). I couldn’t name another Nine Inch Nails album so Ghosts I was more of a way to introduce myself to NIN. I’ve also downloaded other free albums and tracks, notably from The Charlatans. My big problems is this - I just don’t listen to them.

If I bought a CD from a shop then I would definitely listen to it, several times, before I decided if I liked it or not. If a magazine gave away a CD as a free gift then I would still listen to it, maybe even 3 or 4 times to make sure I disliked it before I binned it. But with digital downloads, there is a lack of, I don’t know, commitment. I find the tracks are lost amongst the rest of my library.

I currently have 5,300 songs on iTunes, plus a never ending stream of podcasts to listen to. Sure, its nice to have something for nothing, but if its free then perhaps, you can argue, I’d take it even if I didn’t even want it. I’d take it just because I could. And part of that is true, but I find that even with albums I’ve bought as downloads I don’t listen to them in the same way I would listen to a CD. The unfamiliar tracks get skipped as Shuffle picks up on the singles, the tracks that everyone knows, the one’s that appear in adverts, etc. After a week or so I forget I need to listen to it as the next batch of tunes are loaded onto my iPod and my playlist has changed once again.

My iTunes really has become my own personal version of a musical Digg. The varying metrics (rating, play count, last played, last skipped, etc.) can be tweaked in order to make an automated playlist worthy of submission to Desert Island Discs. But with a CD I’m limited to the 12 or so tracks on the album, and skipping one track means it will just come back around sooner.

I realise this conclusion could just be completely wrong for everybody else. I confess I’m a little lazy in choosing my music, and I like the automation iTunes gives me (although the work needed to set up a large iTunes library is very time consuming), but I think the individual track will win over the album. This is not a personal choice - some albums need to be heard in the order they were conceived (DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing is a prime example - each track is enhanced by its neighbours). I just think its endemic of the digital lifestyle we embrace nowadays.