Monthly Archives: October 2011

Sunday Comic: Price vs. Value

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Sunday is almost over here in Sweden, and I nearly missed posting a sunday comic. :)

But as promised, here is another Mimi and Eunice strip from Nina Paley!

how much does your love cost / love is free / don't you value love

I love this strip so much, because it illustrates how price and value are very different things. A lot of artists, musicians and writers worry that low prices, for instance on ebooks, de-value their work. This is simply not true.

There are other kinds of value than that which is measured in dollars. And the more a piece is shared and enjoyed, the more valuable it becomes. Sometimes even in dollars.

The monetary value of an ebook, or a song, is how much money it’s brought in since its publication, not the price of each copy. If an ebook is priced at $1,000 dollars but sells not a single copy, is it really worth anything compared to a $0.99 ebook that sells 10,000 copies?

Please come back tomorrow for the Album of the Week, where I recommend another album you can download and enjoy free of charge and add to its value by doing it!

Album of the week: Neuland e.p.

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This week’s soundtrack is Neuland e.p. by EndZeit Effekt. It’s German electronica with an industrial feel and I certainly understand if it doesn’t suit everyone, but I really like it.

Album cover: Neuland e.p. by EndZeit Effekt

At Jamendo.com, you can get this album, and thousands of others, for free. That’s “free” as in “free beer”, i.e. you can listen to it online, and even download it, free if charge. If you feel like it, you can donate whatever amount you want, but you don’t have to. For this artist, reaching an audience is more important than getting paid. And that’s the way it should be, because who is going to pay you if you don’t have an audience?

In later posts, I’ll talk more about the differences between “free as in free of charge” and “free as in freedom”, but for now I’ll just say that this album fits the first definition of “free” but not the other.

Is there an artist and/or album at Jamendo.com that you would recommend?

New blog angst

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A lot of things are easier than starting a new blog….

What the hell do I write for a first post? I have no readers, so I guess I can write whatever I want. But still… I started this blog for a reason, didn’t I? Don’t I have something to say then? Well, yes, but if I say it all now then no one is going to read it, because right now I’m the only one who knows this blog exists. What a fucking dilemma….

Yeah, I dropped the “f-word” right there, in the first post. There might be a lot more in the future, so if you’re afraid of words like that, then maybe you should just move along and read something else. Or grow the fuck up. Your choice.

Great… I may have just turned away a potential reader…

Well… If you’ve managed to find your way here, then welcome. I can’t promise it’ll always be interesting, but I’ll do my best.