Free Riding in Nashville

Thanksgiving break for me means finally getting to go home back to Nashville to see my family, friends, and live MUSIC. If you’ve never been to Nashville, let me tell you, live music is everywhere you go. From the restaurants to the public venues to the local froyo shop, live music is there. Most of the time, music in Nashville is a public good, meaning non-excludable and non-rival. It is non-excludable because any passerby has the ability to hear the music, and it is non-rival because one’s consumption of the live music does not exclude anyone else from hearing it. However, the live music in Nashville has a free-riding problem. This is when people benefit from a public good but do not pay for them. This occurs on Broadway, the center for live music in Nashville. Often times, my family, friends, and I will just go walk down Broadway to hear the live music but not actually go inside the restaurant or bars that are playing the live music. We are benefiting from the music without paying for it in the restaurant; therefore, we are free-riding. I love the free live music in Nashville and hope they aren’t able to solve their free rider problem.