In order to make an important distinction between two uses of the word "free", Richard Stallman introduced the phrase "free as in beer" (consider the distinction between "free beer" and "free speech"). The "open source" movement (of which he is part) has given rise to a lot of interesting ideas about the nature of freedom, and of certain economic transactions. A lot of this concerns "freeing up" restrictive notions of intellectual property, to allow for increased creativity and cooperation, for the benefit of all. It doesn't mean that no one can make any money from their creative output.

COTD aims to make "free" music (in a creative sense), to give it away freely AND to explore the possibilities of this new approach to artistic freedom. This is why we have licensed all of our downloadable recordings with Creative Commons, and encourage others to do so.

With the rise of P2P, many "small scale" musicians are complaining that their loss of royalties is undermining their livelihood. This is happening, but record companies are exploiting this situation in order to try to further restrict the unlicensed distribution of "intellectual property", motivated more by concern for their shareholders than for struggling musicians. We cannot offer an immediate solution for the struggling musicians, but it's important to recognise that we are in a period of transition. A shift in the way music is propagated now seems inevitable, ultimately due to the inherent problems with the idea of commodifying recorded music.

People around the world have been making livings as musicians in various contexts for countless generations. Recorded music has changed the situation beyond recognition within a century. Many would agree that the situation is no longer in balance (with a huge wealth gap between the handful of "super-artists" and the mass of struggling musicians), that it is quite unhealthy for the actual music. But people will continue to make their livings as musicians. New means for musicians to support themselves through their music may emerge with new communications technology. Many talented groups who struggle to tour in a small geographical region could have very large potential audiences scattered around the planet who simply don't know they exist. With the rise of relational databases, decentralised (and effectively free) music distribution, multimedia web-casting etc. such groups could quickly find their audiences, and vice versa.

But as economic transactions can so easily taint musical creativity, all of COTD's output will, for the foreseeable future, remain "free as in beer".