Hidden deep in the depth of the Greenbelt office lies a cupboard of treasure… hundreds upon hundreds of thought-provoking, life-changing, soul-warming talks. Some of them, you might have heard, but most of them you'll have missed.
In a spirit of generosity, we've decided to share the wealth: each month we're going to give away a recorded talk and to get us going, this month's talk comes from Festival favourite John Bell. If you subscribe to the Greenbelt podcast via iTunes, this talk, and all future talks will automatically appear amongst the Greenbelt podcasts, if not you'll need to download using the link below.
Once you've enjoyed the goodness of John Bell answering why we should have 'Faith in a Failing Church', hop along to the recorded talks pages of the Greenbelt website (www.greenbelt.org.uk/talks) and take a look around: browse through the most popular talks; take a look at talks recorded at last year's Festival; or hunt down your favourite speaker. If you enjoyed the free talk, you might be particularly interested in other talks by John Bell.
As if that wasn't exciting enough, until 1st May all talks are reduced, with 50% off MP3s and a third off CDs, so you can listen to the likes of Yancey, Yaconelli and even Henri Nouwen from just £1!
To take advantage of this offer, just enter 'LONGNOW' at the checkout.
Go on, take a look, have a listen… your soul will thank you!
Click to download 'Faith in a Failing Church', by John Bell (26MB)
March 12th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
I always wondered what the MP3s were for. Are they about getting the message out, so that as many people as possible (the poor, the students, those without credit cards) can hear them? Or are they about making money for Greenbelt (so it can continue to exist)?
Does the online mp3-download shop make much money for greenbelt, beyond what it costs? Or is it just a barrier?
Is charging for downloads hindering the less well off from hearing what might "enrich" them?
Might it be possible to compromise – perhaps by making previous years talks free, but charging for the new ones?
This would be a wonderful addition to the creative commons – http://creativecommons.org/ – surely a concept that Greenbelt should explore and embrace!
It's not as though you need to pay for hosting – organisations like the internet archive at http://archive.org/ provide free hosting for freely licensed content.
March 12th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Hi Paul,
Thanks for this. It's a really good question. Greenbelt does make some money on recorded talks but once you've taken out all the costs (the team to recorded it, the cost of duplication, the cost of building and maintaining the website) it's not a lot. The money we do make is all put back into the Festival. Without the revenue we make on talks we'd need to increase ticket prices and – to keep the festival as accessible to those on low incomes – we do everything we can to keep the ticket prices as low as possible.
Hope that makes sense and hope you enjoy the talk!
P
March 18th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Are the sales of older talks much lower than the new stuff, or is there a fairly constant demand. If you would not lose many sales my making older ones freely available, is there a good case for doing just that, to increase access?
I appreciate that it takes time and money to make the recordings, and I think the team do a valuable job!
March 27th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
[...] a free talk from John Bell, recorded at last year's Festival here and once you've listened to that, you can check out more talks by John Bell available [...]
March 31st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
[...]Might it be possible to compromise – perhaps by making previous years talks free, but charging for the new ones?[...]
Now there's a thought…maybe U2 could release their old albums for free…?
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
[...]Now there’s a thought…maybe U2 could release their old albums for free…?[...]
If nobody was buying old U2 Albums(*), and if they really had a message they wanted to get across(**), then it might make sense for them to give their old stuff away. There would be negligible lost revenue, the message woukld be heard, and it might promote the newer stuff.
Greenbelt may not be like U2, though
(*) no comment
(**) no comment either
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
It is good to see a price reduction on the MP3 talks, but I think there is an argument for some sort of payment to cover the costs and to give revenue for Greenbelt to keep ticket prices down.
My comment would be that the MP3's have been too hard to find on the website, and need more publicity and price cuts to encourage sales. Maybe this is the start of doing that. Is there any possibility of reviews of talks on the site so that we can see what other people think of them? Or put a code in the annual programme for a free MP3 download from the website ?
April 9th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Hey all, thanks for your comments and sorry for the delay in reply. We hear all your recommendations and we're meeting in the next month to look at various aspects of how the website works so I'll feed all this in,
cheers,
p