heute:pop:blog.  

This morning I was talking about Chris Anderson’s new book ‘ FREE‘ which I can highly recommend. You can read some more in my previous post.

Also, the difference between classical and ‘popular’ music is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently  – related to that I played a track by Ólafur Arnalds who calls his music ‘neo-classical’. You can download his latest free album here.

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons ‘Beggin’
2. My Latest Novel ‘I Declare A Ceasefire’
3. The Low Anthem ‘Charlie Darwin’
4. Sigur Ros ‘Hafsól’ (live)
5. Riceboy Sleeps ‘Happiness’
6. Ólafur Arnalds ‘Erla’s Waltz’
7. Hauschka ‘Morgenrot’
8. Florence And The Machine ‘Howl’
9. Cassettes Won’t Listen ‘Into The Hillside’
10. Fagget Fairys ‘Feed The Horse’
11. Moby ‘Pale Horses’ (Apparat Remix)
12. k-os ’4 3 2 1′

I went to the UK launch of Chris Anderson‘s new book ‘FREE‘ last night which unsurprisingly was a very busy event since he is a bit of a digital media pop star. With being a celebrity come the critics that have to proof that your ideas are in fact rubbish and that try to find examples where “The Long Tail” does not work and where “FREE” destroyed jobs.

I’m not one of those guys. However I had to think of something when Chris was talking about some of his ideas last night. They gave out free copies of the book (an abridged version, not the full one) so I can even quote him now. He is writing:

“What the Internet does is combine all three, compounding the price declines with a triple play of technology: processors, bandwidth, and storage. As a result, the net annual deflation rate of the online World is nearly 50 percent, which is to say that whatever it costs YouTube to stream a video today will cost half as much in a year.”

Although I agree that the above applies to any technology costs this does not work for any licensing expenses. The licensing fees for content is already the biggest expense for many services that stream or otherwise deliver content to consumers. Although there is certain evidence that the cost of content is going down (the PRS has recently lowered they per stream royalty for music streaming services) I don’t believe that this trend will keep on going at a rate of 50% per year.

Nevertheless, Chris Anderson’s book ‘FREE’ looks like another must read for anyone who is interested in how technology changes moder day economics.

Today I talked a bit about the idea that the internet is ‘free’. There will be a blog post following up from this but essentially my point is that there seems to be this mind-set that all content on the internet is free. I argue that we might not pay for it directly when we consume it but that someone will have to pick up the bill.

Take this podcast as an example: it might seem free to you but in reality you are (probably) paying to access the internet and I pay for any streaming costs.

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. Tears For Fears ‘Mad World’
2. We Fell To Earth ‘Lights Out’
3. Grizzly Bear ‘Two Weeks’
4. Eels ‘My Timing Is Off’
5. Bibio ‘Haikuesque (When She Laughs)’
6. Beth Jeans Houghton ‘NIGHT SWIMMER’
7. Withered Hand ‘Oldsmobile Car’
8. Sharon Van Etten ‘Consolation Prize’
9. Phosphorescent ‘It’s Not Supposed To Be That Way’
10. Zoey Van Goey ‘City Is Exploding’
11. Jason Lytle ‘Ghost Of My Old Dog’
12. Metric ‘Help I’m Alive’
13. Simian Mobile Disco ‘Audacity of Huge’ (feat. Chris Keating)
14. Moderat ‘Seamonkey’

I know, I’m the last one to blog about it but nevertheless: You have to read Chris Anderson’s article in Wired Magazine about the economy of ‘free’ which gives you a taste of his book which is supposed to come out in 2009. It will be called, yes you guessed right, ‘FREE’.

An extremely interesting read not only for people working in the digital media industry but for everyone who wants to know about the word in which information is not being paid for but still money is being generated. You will be surprised how much you are already part of that!