Free Music Everywhere Soon?

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on October 09, 2007

Radiohead did it, and now Oasis and Jamiroquai are making noise about following their lead. And today I heard reliably that REM is thinking along the same lines. Techdirt has a lot to say on the subject of the sudden surge in interest by artists in free digital music. Do give it a read.

For Apple, this trend is a threat only to the iTunes store’s music sales, which aren’t critical to Apple’s bottom line anyway. As I’ve said a few million times, iTunes exists to sell iPods, which is where the real money is. Music could be offered for free, DRM-free, and the iPod would still be the best and most popular player on the market, and iTunes would still be the best computer software meant to manage a music library. Plus there will still be TV shows and movies to sell.

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