Comments on: Faith in a Failing Church – a free talk for March 09

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:05:38 +0000

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,

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:13:38 +0000

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 ?

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:58:40 +0000

[...]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

By: MrPloppy

MrPloppy — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:45:29 +0000

[...]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…?

By: Greenbelt Blog» Blog Archive » March 09 Podcast: Saving Paradise

Greenbelt Blog» Blog Archive » March 09 Podcast: Saving Paradise — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:54:24 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:57:54 +0000

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!

By: Phil Smith

Phil Smith — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:38:16 +0000

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!

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:08:47 +0000

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.