Web Giveaways Can Help Sell Albums, Movies

If you give something away for free on the Web, will people still buy it?

Believe it or not, they will. Film and music industry execs, take note.

A recent case in point is “George Lucas in Love,” an eight-minute spoof of “Shakespeare in Love” that recounts erstwhile USC film student Lucas’ odyssey to write his classic space saga. The short film, long a favorite at entertainment site MediaTrip.com (https://www.mediatrip.com) with more than 1 million viewings, has been available in VHS format through Web retailer Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com) for more than a month.

In the first 36 hours of the film’s release at Amazon, Internet users bought 1,500 copies. Since then, “George Lucas in Love,” written and directed by first-time filmmaker Joe Nussbaum, has sold 10,000 copies at Amazon, even though it is still available free of charge on MediaTrip.com.

“Everyone’s concerned that if you give away something for free, people won’t want to buy it,” said Austin Harrison, chief executive officer of MediaTrip.com. “But if you effectively market and brand [products], there is still an incentive to own them. There is a fine line between marketing and giving away for free.”

For Harrison, toeing that line meant offering the video in streaming format, where the film is downloaded continuously and the picture can be choppy at slower modem speeds, rather than as a complete download, which would have allowed users to watch a smoother version again and again at their convenience.

No doubt, some of the frustrations caused by the streaming format motivated “Star Wars” fans to plunk down $7.99, plus shipping and handling, for the video. As one poster identified as “Mander” on the MediaTrip.com message board noted, “Streaming video . . . sucks. Give me a download any day, I can watch it more than once, without sucking all that bandwidth up, over and over.”

Executives at Amazon are keenly aware of the marketing power of free downloads. The site first experimented with the concept in April of last year by offering free, full-length digital downloads of two songs from Sarah McLachlan’s live compilation album, “Mirrorball,” nine weeks before its street date. Within 15 hours of its entering Amazon’s catalog, the disc became the top-selling music title, the fastest that any album has gone to No. 1 on the site.

Acting quickly on the success, Amazon.com created a section devoted to free music downloads in June 1999. At any given time, the site now offers more than 120 free, full-length downloads of music from major-label and independent artists. Some songs “time out,” or expire, after being on a user’s computer for a certain length of time, while others remain playable indefinitely at https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/music/download/download.html.

“We’ve definitely seen that free downloads do drive sales of albums,” said Greg Hart, group product manager for Amazon.com’s Music Store. “It’s a great way to introduce people to new music.”

According to Hart, labels were at first skeptical but increasingly have recognized that downloads are an important part of their online marketing campaigns. Even pirated copies of songs online, such as MP3s, don’t appear to be cutting into music sales; according to SoundScan Inc., overall album sales were nearly 6% higher in 1999 than the year before.

“For labels that are really worried that people will download the songs and then not be encouraged to buy the CD, timing out [downloads] is a good solution,” Hart said. “But we’re not incredibly concerned by the fear that people download and don’t buy. We’ve found that every time we’ve offered a download, it does significantly boost sales [of the disc].”

Kevin E. Wohler, a 32-year-old university Web technician from Topeka, Kan., said he has watched “George Lucas in Love” at least 10 times on the MediaTrip site. Though he admits he hasn’t purchased the short (he’s waiting for the upcoming enhanced DVD version), he suggested reasons that people are motivated “to buy the video when you can see it for free.”

“Fans who like the video will buy it for the same reason that fans buy music,” he said by e-mail. “Music is free on the radio, but having it for yourself is something special. Not to mention, it gets annoying to huddle your friends around a computer monitor every time you want to show it.”

Of course, there are still some Net users who consider it heretical to pay for stuff that is available at no cost on the Web.

“Is everyone ignoring the fact that the running time of this movie is eight minutes? That’s about a dollar a minute, not including taxes and shipping costs. Plus you can see it for free online,” wrote one customer reviewer, identified as coogar from Ontario, Canada, on the Amazon site. “Hell, buy it, it’s not my money you’re spending--buy five copies! woohoo! Don’t even preview the movie for free. Buy ten copies! twenty! empty your savings account for gosh-dang sakes!”