There's a lady who plays the harp on the street in the town where I live. She's really quite good. She uses an amplifier to make the sound of the instrument carry quite a distance; you can hear her playing almost a full city block away. She's really quite good; people stop to listen to her play. In her repertoire she has a lot of cover songs; it's interesting to hear pop music played via a harp.

Next to her, she always has a table with a stack of CDs that you can buy if you want to take her music home with you. They're nothing fancy; just CD-Rs in a thin case with her picture and contact info on them. The CDs themselves cost ten dollars. (I happily bought one, in case you're wondering.)

If you're trying to make money just by selling CDs--which is something that very, very few musicians have been able to do in the past--then it makes perfect sense to charge people ten dollars for the CD.

But what if your goal is to reach as many people as you can with your music, to share your art, and inspire as big an audience as you can? Or to use the CDs as promotional materials, so the word spreads and more people know who you are, and want to hire you to perform at their event? In that case, shouldn't the CD be free?

CEOs don't charge a dollar when people ask for their business card at events.