Week of December 10, 2007

NY Times Shows The Power of Free

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The NY Times had a successful online product that people had to pay for (Times Select). Still, they killed it and made their content entirely free. Why? Well, they were betting that the increase in usage and audience would more than make up in advertising than the fees they lost. Have they? Well, it sure looks like they are moving in that direction. Their traffic trend is enormous, with 7.5 million additional readers, an increase of 65%. Of course the key is monetizing that traffic, but the first step to doing that is generating the traffic in the first place, and the New York Times have definitely done that.

50 Cent: File Sharing Doesn't Hurt Artists

Monday, December 10, 2007

The reality that artists see their money-making ability tied less to music sales and more to things like merchandising and live ticket sales is getting high profile support from major artists. The latest? 50 Cent, who recently noted that, while file sharing was hurting his G-Unit Records, it was helping him as an artist.

That dichotomy between the labels getting hurt but artists not feeling the pain as much will be a major trend that comes home in 2008.