Radiohead Offers In Rainbows
Here was a really interesting one. I don’t often find out things about my favorite artists on digg, but low and behold I ran into the Pay What You Think It’s Worth digg on radiohead.com’s current promotion for the next album, In Rainbows.
Yeah, I did a double take on that one too- they are now taking pre-orders for the new record. Fans are free to name their own price for a digital-download version of the 10-song album. It’s up to you, a message reads when a user clicks on a question mark next to a price box that has been left blank. A subsequent screen adds: No really, it’s up to you.
Admittedly, only artists of a certain stature have the ability to pull off something like this- and it can be interpreted as a severe commitment to giving you the album as an experience, or one hell of a marketing promotion. The Wall Street Journal thinks the stunt will challenge numerous aspects of established music-industry business models. Even if bands like the Greatful Dead have done things like this before, I find this renewed approach refreshing in our current digital music climate.
In September I posted a thread on the boards called Radiohead Rejects iTunes, which I lifted from TUAW. It was reported by Wired and MacWorld that Radiohead preferred people to purchase and experience their albums as whole rather than track by track- as they felt they were meant to be heard. Other artists, such as another one of my personal favorites Tool, have felt the same way about digital sales for some time.
The apple cult members had a field day with it (as they do with any anti-Apple sentiment), but it seems like the naysayers were handed a warm cup of shut the fuck up this time, as I gleefully pointed out tonight. Ironically, Think Different sums it up: Albums-only sales helped Amazon MP3 land Radiohead before iTunes. Other such departures and dissent, such as Trent Reznor’s on-stage antics, brew spiteful glares from RIAA and its constituents. Perhaps Radiohead’s direction is yet another step forward in the separation between the dark side of capitalism and free aesthetic expression. In other words, choice and experience before consumerism. Imagine that.
Filed under: Music
so what are you gonna do mike download it?
how much are you gonna pay?
give me some advice because i want it to!
I think I will simply download it for now… As far as cost, that’s really a personal choice. My advice: if you want the ‘disc box’, pay for it and you’re all set. If you just want the music (as do I)- throw them at least a couple of dollars and await your download link. We don’t know if there is DRM on the music, so it’s best to keep the dollar amount low for now, in my opinion.
“A couple dollars”?? For real? C’mon … that seems a little cheap to me. I like the idea of downloading the music, and then paying what it’s worth. I too will download this but I am sure that I will pay more than a couple dollars. I think 8 is reasonable.
Listening to this now - so far so good…
Reports are in - Radiohead cleans house (and signs with record label for “official” release sometime next year).
Let the change begin!!!
http://valleywag.com/tech/digital-music/radiohead-estimates-doom-record-labels-313395.php
just for the record, i downloaded it last night….i had major problems with the download, it would stop downloading the zip file and my internet would cut off….i tried a few times and gave up (luckily i only paid $0.00!)
but i did a search online and found the whole zip on one of those file sharing sites….from what i heard it sounds pretty good
Damien, sometimes high traffic links will eat your ethernet’s resources; I’ve heard of nothing like this happening with the Radiohead link other the release day, but anything’s possible. (On the other hand, ’sharing sites’ sometimes share more than you bargained for.)
In any case, the record is damn good. Great link from valleywag, Ron. Quoted for awesomeness: “According to one source close to the band, reports The Seminal, fans downloaded 1.2 million copies of “In Rainbows” through October 12, two days after its release. But you already knew Radiohead had a large fan base.
What nobody knew was whether fans would pay for a Radiohead album if they didn’t have to. Certainly, the record labels had to be hoping they wouldn’t. Too bad for the fat cats, because reports are that the average price paid for “In Rainbows” fell between $5 and $8. A low estimate of Radiohead’s take in two days is $6 million. Sounds like bands with a following now have permission to skip labels.”
As we all said, not every bad can do this successfully- but it’s such a great step in the re-evolution of music distribution that surely it will set an example. I’m not anti-capitalism or hate-mongering big labels - I am however down with artistic freedom, consumer value, and change. 3 cheers to Radiohead.
Radiohead has decided to respond to the previous coverage of their social experiment of offering their album online at a name-your-own price. According to a study (by a third party, comScore), only 38% of downloaders paid something while the 62% majority paid nothing. And of those paying, most paid less than $4. While it was fun to speculate on what this could mean for the music industry, turns out any speculation was based on more speculation (comScore’s). Here’s what Radiohead had to say:
“In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group’s representatives would like to remind people that… it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales.
However, they can confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project.”
“True success?” So I take it the results were better than what comScore assumed. Whatever the case, the band has to know the world is interested in these numbers. I mean, come on, how can we speculate on the fate of the music industry if we don’t know Radiohead’s “true success?”
Board member Jody points out the questions and a great follow up article:
“Was it lagging sales?
Was it a failed experiment?
Why did they pull the plug?
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9832659-2.html?tag=cnetfd.mt”
From
http://www.mikull.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=3194
dude, you need to take that link down. The webware article is a joke. Radiohead never intended to have the album available forever and they stated that on their site (if you actually read it).
They did put out preliminary numbers and when you look at reports you must take into consideration (if you understand anything about the Internet) that almost 70% of their sales were pure profit which went directly to them.
No packaging, no true marketing, no record company, no radio crap etc..
I still say kudos to Radiohead. Not every garage band can “give their album away for free”. But, I do think that you will see more innovative record sales. The UK group the Charlatans started offering their album for free nearly at the same time as Radiohead.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2007/12/listeningpost_1210
I’m with you, but I wanted to spotlight the varied perceptions about this little affair. If you read the message board post (the water I’m always leading you to), then you’ll notice I said pretty much the same things.. in fact, I agree with everything you said aside from ‘garage band’. C’mon man, they are huge. No garage band could pull that off.