So I heard them going over the copyleft debate on Radio 4 this morning with Tony James, who has made an album bearing the marketing gimmick in this post's title. This is the last time anybody is going to get on Radio 4 for doing something like this - it's interesting to people that haven't engaged in the debate yet but to the savvy it's old news, and it's getting worn out as a promotional gambit. When asked about making money, Tony said "I still like the idea of buying the records - I download stuff but I still want to go out and buy the CD because I like shopping". I find this argument irritating and flawed.

I've been giving music away for free for years. A lot of music. The first time I realised I should do this was when I was at school - 15 years old - a girl I had always liked asked me if I'd do her a tape of my music and I tried to sell it to her. This turned her off and I was kicking myself for weeks. I realised I was happy to know that people were listening to stuff I'd made and that I shouldn't be doing it for the money.

There is one very important lesson I have learned about giving music away for free: you still have to market free music just as much as you would if you were selling it.

Marketing costs money, and so does every other part of the process. I have spent thousands and thousands of pounds on recording equipment, computers, studio time, marketing and playing gigs over the years - it's certainly not free to make music, even if the means of production are no longer controlled by a select few.

In my old bands (Dionysus, Pinstripe, Gaijin) we always used to make tapes or CDs to sell at gigs - with the right friend pushing them at people in the crowd we could make a few quid (by students' standards anyway). In recent years I have foolishly neglected this habit. But you know why it works? It's not about money, or even how much these customers liked the music (they have to like it a bit, obviously!), but about convenience. This is my considered answer to the questions surrounding this entire free-music debate.

Sometimes the most convenient way to get something is to download a torrent. Sometimes it's easier to burn a copy of a CD borrowed from a friend. If the business people get it right, the most convenient way to obtain something involves an exchange of money. If something is reasonably priced and easier to buy than to pirate, then I'll buy it. For instance - Quicktime Pro costs £20. I had a choice to hunt down a crack or serial number and try to find something that was not a virus or a scam (try it with Quicktime - it's a particularly awkward thing to find a decent copy of), or just hand over my £20 and get it delivered painlessly and instantly, and not feel bad for stealing. I have paid for a lot of little bits of software since I got my Mac - and I pay for the upgrades when they come round, because it is easier than pirating stuff and it doesn't make me feel bad.

I noticed the same thing recently with the iTunes music store. I don't have a TV but I wanted to watch Peep Show the morning after it had been shown - the torrents hadn't emerged yet but it was available for a reasonable cost (£1.89) on iTunes. So I paid instead of waiting. I rented a few films through iTunes after this - films I would never normally have paid for but I wanted something to watch more-or-less immediately so I handed over a little cash.

I don't know about you, but I find record shopping immensely tedious. I can never find anything I want - I am always having to guess what section I will find a recording in - my tastes don't really match up to the sections in 'Zavvi' (if that is your real name!) so I invariably leave frustrated. I always balked at buying music from iTunes because of the DRM (i.e. the inconvenience of not being able to control how I played the music) so was very happy when they started getting rid of it, and now I'll buy stuff because it's the most convenient route. I'd rather get something at a reasonable price where there is some quality control and a pleasurable user experience, than wade through a lot of torrent files or LimeWire noise to wait an unspecified length of time before receiving something that may or may not be what I'm after. Kids spend money on ringtones because it's really easy to do so.

In summary: we need to keep looking for ways to make it easier for people to pay for art than to take it for free.

Are these links even easy enough??

Michael Forrest - Broken Into Tumbolia on
eMusic , iTunes , Amazon MP3 or GroupieTunes