Episode 30 of the This Week in Tech Podcast, "Live from the Podcast Expo" features a panel of techo journalists talking about podcasting and its impact on the distribution of content.
One of the points was that the firms who did the best job locking down their software and preventing piracy have all failed, while those that were more lax about copying ended up with more users and did better.
Later in the show they have a musician as a guest. His band doesn't publish albums, they give away all of their music via podcasts. He said that bands don't make money on the recordings anyway, the money is made on the tours. Giving their content away is a way of promoting their tours.
None of this is news to Mises.org readers. The Mises Insitute has been giving away the content in books for free for years. While the Mises Institute is not a for-profit organization, Jeff Tucker explains in the linked article that books that are searchable and available for free download sell more printed copies than those that are not.
