“First Hit is Free, next time you pay”

The idea of giving away free stuff in any medium or in this case free media to promote and to increase sale of goods and services is definitely not a new gimmick.   It is good marketing strategy giving out free samples to prospective consumers to sample.  If they like it they can come back for more but next time they pay.  If the consumers don’t like it, you can ask them why and improve on it or discarded it.  Although today’s consumers’ behavior is different from the ones back in the 1920’s or even in the 1990’s because there are so many varieties and competition out there.  But there’s one thing we do have in common, we like free stuff, whether we needed or not, as long as it is FREE!  But how free is free, and is the free stuff worth the hassle?

Depending on the demographic many boomers still prefer the physical form vs. the Yuppies and the “Hipsters” when it comes to buying video games, software, music and DVD.   Personally, I prefer to pay a little more to buy the software on disk format where as my daughter would rather purchase the programs, apps, or the books via download. Some people are hard to part with the brick and mortar mentality.  There are people out there still prefer to listen to analog music and buy their vinyl records online versus the majority who prefer to download most if not all their music and stream their movies online.  In the long run I feel all these free and questionable borderline pirate download sites will eventually put many artists out to pastures.  Contrary to the idea thinking free enterprise can be a good thing in today’s economy and  social climate needs to take a good look in the trenches, because the greedy, the needy and definitely the seedy people out weights “the truth, justice and the American ways.”

I see the effect of what Anderson had said in the chapter about software and video games’ that “over the next decade, this $10 billion industry will shift from primarily a traditional packaged goods business to an online business built on entry prices of zero.” For decades since the first PC was on sale at J&R Music World at their downtown store, they dedicated almost two large floors for software, programs, and video game cartridges. Today J&R had converted that entire software department and floor space for another goods and services leaving only a small section for portable games cartridges and two small window displays for Microsoft products.  Oddly their music and movies section is still intact and doing well despite of the black marketers selling knock off in Chinatown less than miles away from the store. It appears that Best Buy is also experiencing the same problem because most of the software is now sold via online account for instant download rather than to have to wait for the disk in the mail. The remaining bricks and mortar computer stores are seeing there software sales going down, and they have decided not to stock the products and use the storage for more marketable goods. 

Even for the printed material and their related website like the New York Times where you the reader can read up to 20 articles for free, but once you exceed the 20^th article, the site put up a banner preventing the reader to access anymore article. There are ways to get around it like by creating more than one account, but come on, how cheap can we get? Don’t ask.  At this current economic climate, I see Wall Streeter in their Brooks Brother dumpster diving for a free copy of the Wall Street Journal.  I’m not kidding the rich and wealthy folks can be thrifty and stingy as hell.

Then we have the online stores like Barnes & Nobles, eBay, Amazon that will give regular and loyal customers freebies like free shipping, discount points, special sales to keep you from leaving to other online stores.  As a typical Manhattan-nite and an Old School Boomer, I not a regular online shopper because I still like to touchy feely my goods before buying.  I do shop online only if it is absolutely positively necessary that I can’t buy at a store. Another reason why I hate shopping online is I live in a tenement building in Manhattan and the delivery services might it Fed-Sux, UP-Sucks or US gone Postal Service, they’re all lousy when it comes to delivery.  But that’s another topic to blog about on internet kill the snail-mail.  I used to have a Border account because it was “Free.” vs. B&N with a $35 annual membership fee.  You have to really love to read or love to buy retail to pay for a membership for B&N. Why would anyone pay $29.99 for a DVD if you can same one online for half the price at Amazon or better yet, download it for free from one those questionable share sites. 

But if you’re a soccer mom or a member of the suburban lazy-boy armchair warrior living out in the boondocks far away from a Wal-mat, online shopping would be perfect.  The same situation for ordering movies and video online from sites like Netflix from the comfort of your couch is perfect.  Of course these services will eventually replaced more brick and mortar store and affect other sector of the workforce when certain product is no longer produce.  Soon the DVD and the CD disk will be sent to retirement along with the floppy disk, cassettes, VHS and Beta max tapes?  If this continues, every family would have massive storage drives and multi-media players. 

The online gaming sector is also trying to cash in on this so call free media bandwagon allowing gamers or novices to sample games for free or releasing “Beta” version of a game for gamers to test drive these games to get the bugs out.  What a great idea to have the gamers test drive and debug the games for free and the company can save millions of dollar on human resources like paying OT to their own high price programmers and software engineers. It’s a win-win situation. Of course for the hardcore gamers who contribute to these games by playing, testing and debugging it for free, the company can give these gamers free account or game keys.  The company will eventually charge these gamers once they’re “cracked” out on the game.  The company will charge what Anderson called “real estate,” things like skins for the gamers’ characters, “life”, swords, weapons or whatever the games calls for. 

The first time I heard about MMO was from my daughter and I only know RPG stands for Rocket Propel Grenade, but my daughter told me it’s Role Play Games, D’uh!  I guess this is the part of the virtual world and gaming where most people are hooked and trapped inside once they start playing. Other than certain console games like Wii or Nintendo, I never play any online games, but my 21yo daughter, that’s another story. I must have spent thousands on Pokémon cards, toys, games cartridges, DVD and who knows what else.  She played WOW and many other MMORPG and she is now Beta testing TERA, another MMORPG.  When I made the statement about playing these games is like a “Crack” addiction and the companies’ that produces these games are like the neighborhood drug pushers. I meant it.  In fact I think these MMORPG are more addicting than Crack cocaine because the entire game and every player in it are enablers pushing each other harder and harder to win and to destroy things.  I guess if I have a son, he would be playing all the military SOG games.  Ironically, theses are the very same programs the military written to train our soldiers to become lean mean fighting machines.  These game companies found other ways to generate revenue with these programs by using their generative method to change the format from the military to civilian applications. 

Another one of those media who is banking on the power of FREE are the long-distance telephone and wireless carrier.  The carrier company is willing to give you a FREE cellular telephone, a Smartphone at that, providing you are willing to sign an agreement with that carrier that you will stay with them for a specific amount of time, usually two years.  All I wanted was a basic wireless telephone to do one thing and one thing only, make calls, but the damn thing will cost me $150.00, but Verizon had a special that day, a FREE UTC Smartphone that comes with shitload of apps, Android, robots, cyborgs, light saber and whatever the hell that was preloaded into this thin wafer of a phone, FOR FREEE!  Oh hell yeah I am going to get one. OH YEAH, you get the second one for $49.99. YES, YES, YES.  So now my daughter and I each have the UTC Android Smartphone with Google, wooohoooo!  Verizon figured out that once I start using the phone and playing with the apps, I would buy and download more apps or even download music and ringtone for the phone. Sorry, but this is one old guy that’s going back to lo-tech-ville.

Some things never changes, buy $20 worth of groceries and we’ll give you one volume per week of a 20 volume set of the World Book Encyclopedia, buy this 45rpm single and you get the flipside free, buy the 12” 45rpm and you get a free tee-shirt, and if you’re the first 100 people on line, Ms. Summers will sign you album cover, your tee-shirts and a Polaroid shot with Ms. Summer. Buy the TV and we will send the signal to your unit via cable and radio signal, FREE. 

"Money for Nothing"

“Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and chicks for free
Now that ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys ain't dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb” – Dire Straits

“Video Killed the Radio Star”

I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you.
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through.

They took the credit for your second symphony.
Rewritten by machine and new technology,
and now I understand the problems you can see.  – The Buggles

The Internet Killed…

One of these days, I'ma gonna git this bloggin' down pack...