I will admit – I feel completely unoriginal for choosing a Seth Godin post as the post of the month.  Still, from my perspective it offered the most thought provoking concept this month for musicians, or entrepreneurs catering to musicians.

In the ultra fast world of online marketing, free may be so 2008.

The underlying hypothesis in Seth’s post is that “some things may be better if they are not free.”  He uses Craigslist as an example.  If Craigslist charged $1 for every listing the site would be more efficient (less scams and bogus postings) and the site would generate tons of cash to perform whatever social good they would like.

So how does this apply to music?  Haven’t we all accepted that music is free now and there ain’t nothing we can do about it?

Well despite the many opinions to the contrary, I am not convinced that charging for music is lost forever.

Rather, I remain convinced that there are still ways to organize music in ways that add value for the listener / purchaser such that paying for such a service will become a rational choice.

Extrapolating Seth’s idea, perhaps a website could be started that charges yearly fees to both musicians (to post) and users (to listen and download).  Even better, start a group of websites.  One charges $100 a year to musicians, another $10 a year, and another only $1 (basically free).  Each different site would likely attract different sets of musicians and listeners, which may in turn make each site have its own culture and stickiness, perhaps (for better or worse) much like society as a whole.  (In some ways this is already happening in the job seeker market, with specific websites catering to $100K+ plus jobs etc.)

The more expensive sites would likely attract those who are willing to pay for quality, and only those with quality songs, or at least perceived quality, would pay the money to list there.

While this idea is certainly not very refined, the point I am making is that there are still some good and creative ideas to be found that involve charging money for music, for the good of everyone in this industry.

It doesn’t all have to be free.