Moses Supposes

Moses Supposes: Music’s Secret to Competing with “Free” — Raise the Price

Moses Avalon is one of the nation’s leading music-business consultants and artists’-rights advocates and is the author of a top-selling music business reference, Confessions of a Record Producer. More of his articles can be found at www.mosesavalon.com.

Pundits are declaring that, due to so much free music on the web, Amazon’s 69-cent-a-tune program is the ultimate sign of retail music’s demise. But some basic laws of marketing are being ignored within these conclusions. The solution to competing with free might be counter-intuitive: raise its wholesale price. Insanity? Let’s see.

Sometimes it probably seems like I take a contrary position to my fellow music business experts just to stand out. But that’s not true. The truth is that I just read more data than many of them and, therefore, I’m more righter. (Great English, huh?) Such will be the case here as well. For a while, many are saying that now is the time to cut back prices to “compete with free.” I say the opposite. What’s my secret?

History. Looking at history is always more revealing than pontificating about the future. But it does require a bit more research.  History tells us what is likely to happen tomorrow, because even though technology may progress at the speed of a microchip, it still hits the road-bumps of bureaucracy and human nature — a constant often ignored by the “if you build it, they will come,” techno-centric philosophers.