Cory Doctorow responds to the claim from a fellow journalist that many of those that recommend the freemium model are actually not practising what they preach and are raking in the dollars by charging for exactly that which they suggest others should give away.
It's a long piece but worth a read - although he doesn't talk directly about music it's obvious that everything he covers also applies to the future of music.
What should other artists do? Well, I'm not really bothered. The sad truth is that almost everything almost every artist tries to earn money will fail. This has nothing to do with the internet, of course. Consider the remarkable statement from Alanis Morissette's attorney at the Future of Music Conference: 97% of the artists signed to a major label before Napster earned $600 or less a year from it. And these were the lucky lotto winners, the tiny fraction of 1% who made it to a record deal. Almost every artist who sets out to earn a living from art won't get there (for me, it took 19 years before I could afford to quit my day job), whether or not they give away their work, sign to a label, or stick it through every letterbox in Zone 1.
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