MilktruckHeist

Elsewhere I take great interest in recent moves by The Charlatans [releasing a full album free online] and Nine Inch Nails, who I absolutely adore.

undeadbydawn

Enough with the gushing, now to my point. I currently work in a business that offers products based off a "pay what you can" model. We've been following this strategy for the last 5 months and our sales have been phenomenal.

Yes waxes and wans month to month. But for every couple of "free" products we send out we get someone who's paying $5 to $50.

We're certainly still in the "wait and see" phase. Testing marketing dialogue and offer tie-ins but so far it's worked very very well for us.

I think this will work great for Radiohead. As some have mentioned they get very little of the actual monies from album sales, this way they'll most likly get much more, even with thousands of people downloading the album for free.

I do agree though, that this would be a difficult strategy for a band starting up to adopt. But it'll be interesting to see if other big bands follow suite. While i don't see record labels offering their bands albums at a "you choose the price" anytime soon, it does seem likly that if more and more bankable bands go this route, the record execs are at the very least going to have to rethink some of the terms of a contract to keep it attractive to the up and coming bands they sign.

brodie123

Jens Lekman
Billie the Vision & The Dancers
PlayRadioPlay!

In the case of Jens Lekman, my favorite artist, I ended up buying his albums, which are available both online as DRM-free mp3 at [www.klicktrack.com] and as physical discs from jenslekman.com.

TJOHO

Like most donation systems it suffers from the free-rider problem, where everyone assumes that someone else will pay and as such they don't need to do so. Eventually it almost always shrinks down to the point where there's only a core group of supporters footing the bill. And when that group gets tired of supporting all of the freeloaders... Boom.

This is nothing more than a publicity stunt. They do this amazing new concept, people flock to it and write and blog all about it, and Radiohead laughs and rakes in the dough.

ghmlco

Pastrafer

I completely disagree; small bands should be able to benefit from this model. I was in a couple of different touring bands for a few years and most of our revenue (no matter how meager) came directly from playing shows and selling merch. While our label did their job of fronting the money for recording/CD pressing, even the best label will eat over 80% of the CD revenue, and you as the band rarely make much out of the release. When you're talking about working on such a small scale, you won't see a lot of promotion of your release from the labels either.

On the other hand, if you front the money for recording/pressing yourself and use the temptation of free downloads creatively, you could have earned yourself much more internet exposure than you may have landed from your label (or perhaps the interest of larger labels as well). You might not make as much on the album, but you will get significant returns on show attendance/merch sales. Hell, you might not even suffer that large of a financial hit on the CD's - we put our album out there on Soulseek/Bit Torrent-esqe programs and still sold about 300 CD's on my last tour with the band, much more than enough to break even for recording and the first press of 1000.

dickrhee

ben792x

What I think they should really do (I'm not a big fan of theirs BTW) is invert the payment - make it free to start with and then have people pay what they think after they've actually heard it. I don't want to pay for a product I'm unfamiliar with (like all other albums) - let me download and listen to it a few times, then I will get back to you.

They can even put something like "(unpaid)" in the ID3 tag and then a simple script that fixes the tags. Yes, you can "pirate" it by fixing the tags, but it would be a simple reminder for the honest folks (I know I'm forgetful).

RevRagnarok

yardameus

OMG! Ponies!

So, all in all, this isn't much different then a leaked album. You can download it for free months in advance, or you can wait and pick up a physical copy for $15

aquaosx

robman84

ytrameel

I hope the message gets out, and this trully becomes the future of music. I'm all for musicians getting rewarded for the quality of their music, not for publicity, marketing and other BS.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

Valrik

Lorne

albokay

graffiksguru

This is nice for them, but it would be hard for a band to get off the ground and make a living starting out this way.
Piracy is not justified by DRM-Free and "I want to hear the music early." At least some music downloads this year will be in the moral right.

Sean

[www.stateradio.com]

The lead singer is formerly of Dispatch - "the band that redefined independent music history", rising to fame without a record label's help (but with the help of peer-to-peer).
To celebrate the release of their new album, they've given away free downloads of their entire back-catalog. When they hit a manufacturing delay of their new CD, they added an extra EP to the downloads as an apology. They are obviously hoping you love the music enough to buy the new album and see them live.

I will be doing both.

JacquesAss

The record industry could learn so much by taking Econ 101.

aseriesoftubes

JAY.SCHUBERT

john

My point is that radiohead can do this now because they were able to use that "evil record industry" to get their name out. They had years of MTV, radio & TV/Film soundtracks before they could say "let our consumers come to us". There are already thousands of artist w/ free downloads on their sites, but they're not backed by a known identity so you don't know who they are. I still think this is a good idea, but only for already known talent.

kahri

If those fans, being the good groupies they are, each download the album, that's about $9000 (minus the cost of whatever website/download service the band might have to pay). I don't know...sounds like a pretty nice model to me.

CajunGuy

sumocat

Even if you think about the cosm of people who will read / comment on this post: the people who are interested enough in the ever-expanding concave problem of music piracy to read this post are willing to care about the music.

Most people, won't.

twoohfour

Nick_M

Canadian Impostor

bravo to thom and the boys!

Kricket

aseriesoftubes

This line of thinking assumes that musicians are inherently entitled to become rich and famous for their work. I can think of plenty of artists, musicians among them, who produce their craft knowing full well that they'll never "make their millions."
I guess it's all about the motivation. Personally, I'd think twice about supporting an artist financially if I knew they were only in it for the money.

Schmack

Stacky Botrus

Sure I could have downloaded this for free, but I would rather send an artist like Radiohead the money directly than give it to RIAA so they can continue to fund their fucked up process of suing their customers.

chillywilly

With plethora of professional-grade home-recording equipment available today, almost anybody with a few thousand dollars to invest can play this game.

Now how many of them are worth paying for is another question...

ideaman2020

kahri

Thus, it only takes a few people actually paying to turn a profit... [as opposed to getting a few pennies per copy via Record Company accounting..]

ideaman2020

konstantConsumer

This makes me want to buy this album and I'm not even a Radiohead fan. [Ok, I do like Creep, but that's about the extent of my Radiohead fandom..]

F#%K the RIAA!

PS, it has been reported elsewhere that the minimum purchase price is about 42p [the cost for the fund transfer]... still that's what, about a dollar for a whole album?

ideaman2020

Not only will I download this album (I honestly never paid a lot of attention to Radiohead, but I hear so much good buzz about them that this puts it over the top), but I'll at least throw in a few dollars that I wouldn't have if I had been forced to pirate it to hear it. Good going, guys.

TurboFool

MMFY

nachobel

If the product is worthy of keeping, adding to a collection, and effecting us at a deeper emotional level, then we will feel better about exchanging our money for that product in return. I think the addition of the 'discbox' is a great idea, because it provides a complete, physical product that reinforces that emotional connection to the product.

LastVigilante

lafond66

uncleezno

Windhawk

uncleezno

I could feasibly see this being somewhat effective for an up-and-coming band, but not a superpower like Radiohead. They aren't going to get my "charity" money that's for sure. I'm fairly sure that Thom York has plenty of cash and I'm also fairly sure that I don't.

mjmahon

So, I'm going to go out on a limb, write a too long comment, and be the jerk on this one.

When Prince took all of his music, set up his own website where you could download his music and distributed the physical copies of his own music in the manner he wanted, people painted him as a crazy whiny-baby who took his ball and went home.

Since I love Prince, I thought it was an amazing act of taking full ownership over his own career. (He mishandled the whole thing ultimately, but I still liked the idea.)

On the flip side, Radiohead always strike me as cooler-than-thou and smug as $#!+. So this just strikes me as one more waaaay pretentious - "aren't we cool" move.

Like the celebrity that only eats organic and local in their solar powered house (all very good things), and then makes everyone else feel like a prick for not being able to afford to do the same.

92BuickLeSabre

mconheady

Boomstick

Courtney Love made a great speech about the economics of being a recording artist a couple of years ago (google "sucka vc's" if you want to read it), and in it she referred to the "Tip Jar" as being the most direct and efficient way to reward artists. Radiohead has perfected the "Tip Jar" in my opinion.

Can new and upcoming bands make this model work? They are already doing it. How does a new band "Break Out" without RIAA-sponsored payola and marketing? Social networks like MySpace and FaceBook are already showing the way.

Great stuff.

thegrail

eduardjm

Kaiser-Machead

srfndave

JahFurry

Zho

I think it's a completely sustainable model, and it actually might have the effect of limiting the amount of crap music pushed out. Maybe if people didn't think they could record something in the studio for an hour and make a million dollars, and they actually had to work for a living, we wouldn't get so many crap "artists" out there.

weatherman

fejjnagaf

God bless you scraggly british geniuses

kaneshadow

Perhaps by collecting those "Royalty" fees from various commercial and non-commercial online/offline radio stations. The ones that apply no matter what the artists who create the music played say concerning the rights and usage of their tunes.

Nauthiz

Elvisisdead

Canadian Impostor

kahri

yotoad

I wouldn't be so sure.

It's easy to take this approach when you're a millionaire band with one of the biggest brand names in music and little financial interest in your releases. What do you say to all the little bands out there crowding onto distribution platforms and competing against free, high-quality music from top competition? This sort of behavior crushes markets.

This essentially makes the argument that the music is just a marketing platform for the tour. I'm not sure that's a viable or sustainable strategy, particularly for borderline bands or new acts.

SlightlyLessDeliciousNoise

MJDeviant

OneMHz

Radiohead is totally gay, but i think we can all put that aside for now. I, for one, wont let their uncoolness sully this boldest of moves in my minds eye. Bravo.

nutbastard

zackbowman

liquidsoapdispenser

ANoel

As a former struggling band member who shrieked with glee when he got paid $30 for his 20th gig when all the others had been no free performances, I cant see many up and coming (read poor) bands doing this.

When your have the millions, then you can start sticking it to the man. Up until that point you need the man to help you out and stop you making those bad decisions.

But I congratulate radiohead for doing this.

djheath

EventHorizon

gary_slamson

scoobydoo