Wednesday’s post about Nine Inch Nails’ recent announcement they were giving away their new album over the NIN website opened up some discussion about the merits of free. Plus, it gave me fodder for today’s Friday Five. And best of all — say it with me — it’s free!
- Brad J. Ward has been thinking about free for a while now, and shares a post from March called ‘Free’ is here to stay.
- Eddie Merille, a relatively new higher ed blogger, has also been thinking about free and shares some info about how the video game industry is embracing the concept of giving away stuff.
- Mark Greenfield points to an excellent (albeit long) Wired article by The Long Tail author Chris Anderson about the future of free in business: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. Brad Ward also references the article in his post (mentioned above) and points out that Anderson has coined a new term: freeconomics.
- Most music fans know about the blog Stereogum, which gives away a lot of mp3s.
- Music lovers also might want to check out RCRD LBL as a source for free tunes.
Andrew Careaga 
A great place to look for free music is http://hypem.com/ have lots of different genres and you can search for a band you like. Links you to mp3’s of their music. Lots of good indie.
With the proliferation of software, online games, widgets…etc., the supply / demand curve will naturally push the price down to free. It’s up to the companies providing these products and services to figure out how to deal with this phenomenon.
At InnoGage, we develop digital tools to help colleges connect current students with prospective students through video, blog and IM. I can tell you that the idea of “free” is a key part of our strategy when we move into development of a new tool.