Free stuff!

Now that I have a little free time on my hands(read:unemployed), I've been reading alot. Books, you say? No although I do have time to finish reading "A thousand Splendid Suns" and a few other books that have nothing in common with one another except that they have all been halfway read by me. But I digress. I've been reading on what people think the next economic model is for online media. Seems like everybody's saying you should give your content away for free. Sounds crazy at first, actually, it still sounds crazy, so I got to do more research. But I guess the reasoning is that in the internet age, content can be reproduced infinity and the millionth copy is no less perfect than the original. That single fact drives the price of content to zero. Traditional media like books and dvds make money because there is only a limited number of them. Thus the price is dependent of the cost of the actual physical media on which the content resides. So you give away your content for free because it is infinite and get people to buy real items like t-shirts, autographs and other exclusive stuff.

The only downside I see (And I admittedly have to do some more research on the subject so I can fully grasp what these people are proposing) is now your profits aren't tied to the main product, it's tied to the secondary products you sell. Which means it's possible for more people to own your content than buy material goods from you. That wasn't possible in the old model since the material goods you sold contained the content, excluding piracy. Also while once the content is made it become infinite, making the content is a finite process, and cost money, which can only be recouped by the secondary products since you give the content away for free. Anyways these people know a hell of a lot more than me, so listen to them.



A discussion on the scarcity vs infinity model.
http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html
there is a lot of more good stuff on this website about technology

Here's one on how to make a living in comics through this model.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/09/what-newspaper-cartoonists-can-learn-from-web-comics273.html

here is one on the indy film making.
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/bill-mechanic-on-moguls-bad-decision-making/

I found this a long time ago that has a lot of good stuff about the changing media environment.
http://www.buzzmachine.com/

oh and this Pencil test blog, which is the greatest Idea ever!
http://www.penciltestdepot.com/

And I found most of this stuff through Keith Lango's blog and Mark Mayerson's blog. You can find them on my blog list, they have plenty of awesome animation related stuff on their blogs too.

So for all people that are like, I don't want to listen to Jodie's crazy ideas he just learned about on how the market works in the internet age. I didn't come to be brainwashed, I came for drawings, here is a logo I just did for someone. Plus, I personally would skip all that reading on account of the fact you can't just click on the web address, you have to copy and paste them.