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Radiohead: Pay What You Want
By Michael Lundberg | October 7, 2007
I’m probably the last person on the planet to write about this, but on Monday (October 1st, 2007), Radiohead announced that their upcoming album, “In Rainbows,” will be sold directly through their website. This isn’t anything new really. Bands have been experimenting with selling their albums directly in various forms since 1997 when Prince became the first major artist to release an internet only album (Crystal Ball). So, what’s Radiohead’s twist on this? Well, there’s two things really. The first thing is that they songs will be available in mp3 format, completely free of any digital rights management. The second thing, and by far the more important of the two, is that Radiohead plans to allow fans to decide what they want to pay for the album.
As it turns out, Radiohead is currently not signed to a record label. This, coupled with the fact that they are an established band, affords them certain liberties not allowed to “signed” bands. Namely, they are not confined to a record label induced release date. Instead, they can record music at their own pace. Secondly, they do not have pressure from a record company to include radio-friendly singles on the album, letting them focus on creating the album that they want to create.
This is a very interesting move from Radiohead. Previously, they were one of only a few very prominent bands, which includes The Beatles and Metallica, who had not made their music available through any online digital store like iTunes. It’s widely believed that The Beatles are will be releasing their music via iTunes sometime in the near future following the historic Apple and Apple Corps lawsuit. Metallica last year released their back catalogue on iTunes. Up until now, Radiohead has always stated that the reason they don’t offer their music online is that they only want to sell albums - they don’t want to sell individual songs. We will have to wait and see what Radiohead plans to do with the rest of their back catalogue, but I doubt they’ll be offering it up for whatever fans want to pay, but I guess a fanboy can dream, can’t he?
I can’t wait to see what else they might have planned and I’m especially looking forward to listening to the album itself.
I’m planning on buying it for $10. My reasons:
- I’ll still probably have to buy a supplemental Radiohead album later, just because I’m not going to get all the songs that come with the $80USD box set.
- You don’t appear to get any liner notes
- That’s how much I pay for the albums that I purchase from iTunes
It would be really interesting to see how much information they release about the album sales, after it’s released. I’d be especially curious to know how many albums they sell and the average purchase price of the album.
So, how about you? If you’re planning on buying the album how much will you pay?
You can pre-order the album now, and download will become available starting Wedesday, October 11th, 2007. Go get it!
Topics: Music |
October 21st, 2007 at 7:46 pm
So unfortunately seems like it didn’t work out that well and most people took the music without paying a penny. I wonder how this will affect musicians like Madonna, who seemed like she was going to try the same route…
We’ve been spoiled by illegal download, I suppose. Shame - I paid, like you, out of principle.
October 21st, 2007 at 9:52 pm
@ Kate - It’s hard to be sure and I doubt that Radiohead will release final sales numbers. The closest thing that I’ve seen is this article at Gigwise:
http://tinyurl.com/ysme3d
This article alone would lead you to believe that the exercise was a success. Then I read this Forbes article:
http://tinyurl.com/33syug
Ultimately, it sounds like Radiohead will make more money selling their music this way (direct and name-your-own-price), but there may be fewer legitimate cds sold, in total.
Either way, the fans win. Hopefully, more artists (Nine Inch Nails, Madonna, Oasis, etc.) will challenge the system.
Thanks for posting!
Michael Lundberg
http://www.michaellundberg.com