Free: The Future of a Radical Price

July 15, 2009
Chris Anderson | Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine

In the digital marketplace, the most effective price is no price at all. Savvy businesses are raking it in with indirect routes from product to revenue with such models as cross-subsidies (giving away a DVR to cell cable service) and “freemiums” (offering Flickr for free while selling the superior FlickrPro to serious users. New media models have allowed successes like Obama’s campaign “billboards” on Xbox Live, Webkinz dolls and Radiohead’s name-your-own-album experiment. A generational and global shift is at play—those below 30 won’t pay for information knowing it will be available somewhere for free: in China today 95% of music consumption is pirated.
“Free” is no longer “giving things away” but a new business strategy for survival.

Speaker Details

Chris Anderson is Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, which has won a National Magazine Award under his tenure. His first book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More was an international bestseller. Before joining Wired in 2001, he worked at The Economist where he launched their coverage of the Internet. He has a degree in physics from George Washington University and did research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory prior to entering the field of journalism.