Originally posted by Dupek Chopra:
Originally posted by Liberte:
Why are they free?
Because they have different business models..?
Pardon my
French, but that's just a load of happy MBA horseshit. [/b][/QUOTE]
Pardon my English, but I'm not an MBA and it's just a load of basic economic reality. A business model is simply a description of how you spend money and how you get money in the door to pay yourself and your bills. Every business has one, whether they call it that or not.
Free newspapers have a model that lowers their distribution costs by enough that they don't have to charge the reader for putting a copy in his or her hands. There's nothing about that which necessarily compromises the readability of the editorial content. If you choose to believe otherwise, that's your prerogative. Just don't expect not to get called on trying to pass that opinion off as based in fact.
The original topic of the thread was how to help musicians trying to find a new audience in a new location. The free papers are one potentially useful avenue for promotion, because plenty of music fans manage to get past voodoo bullshit prejudices about the nominal cost of something being the same as its value. They find it worth their time to pick up and read those papers which provide interesting and useful content, again and again and again. Is there some reason the band in question should NOT want to reach those fans (who by the way number several hundred thousand weekly readers in Metro DC alone)?
