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Radiohead Says Name Your Own Price for New Album
TechDirt is reporting that the band Radiohead has apparently chosen the path less traveled when it comes to the release of their new album. They are offering two very unique methods of purchase for their new music, the ability to name your own price for a digital download or the ability to purchase a special "discbox" which will contain the album on CD and vinyl in addition to a horde of goodies. Will be interesting to see how this new model works out for them and what it might do to more traditional methods.
But it is beautiful PR for Radiohead
... but this kind of make me wondering about buying it for two dollars or whatever just to get them some money and show them that it works =P
How about a direct link to the page where you can pre-order the album (in either form)? http://www.inrainbows.com/
and even after hosting/bandwidth fees and site maintenance, they are probably still making more $$ per sale than they would have with a traditional record deal
-$50,000.00. I'll take cash or check.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
Yes. You can choose no price.
--- Bah, who needs a sig?
Dr. Evil: Okay, here's the plan. We get the CD and then hold the world ransom for... 1 MILLION dollars! Number Two: Sir, strictly speaking, a million dollars will not go very far these days. Virtucon alone makes over 9 billion dollars a year. Dr. Evil: Really? Okay then... we hold the world ransom for 1... hundred... BILLION dollars!
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
for illegally downloading their music, can we choose how much we can settle for too?
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
They'll make up for the free digital download (and then some) with the $80 price tag on the discbox. There are easily enough Radiohead fanatics out there to make some major cash on this thing.
That being said, I wonder if this is some kind of strange social experiment to see if anyone actually puts more than $0 in the price box. I probably won't.
It will be even more interesting to see the reaction of some of the big labels.
Technoli
There's no "Somewhat unique", or "very unique".
Of course it does. That's sort of the point, isn't it? You pay what it is worth to you. If it is worth nothing, pay nothing. If nobody pays anything, we are unlikely to see more music from Radiohead (especially under such permissive marketing schemes) but it wasn't worth anything to you so who cares?
If, on the other hand, it is worth something to you, you might want to send them something to encourage them to continue making music.
It's really quite simple.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Only immediate problem I see is that the record companies are going to be darned sure to sign new bands to perpetual contracts to prevent this kind of defection in the event of success. Maybe the new pathway will be for new bands to get exposure on iTunes or Amazon's new .mp3 download service. And just maybe, as the article suggests, big successful bands selling direct will feature or promote new, worthy acts.
We can be glad the sun is setting on the **AAs.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Not because $0.00 is a valid price to download, but because they are actually doing something right, valuing a download vs. real physical product in this test. No matter what they do, people will be sharing their music for free, so they capitalize on that for the news bite, AND offer up more than a license to listen to 3+ minutes of music for sale. The way the human mind tends to work, they stand a good chance of making money on this.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I think this will be very interesting *ONLY IF* Radiohead publishes the results of such a promotion.
It will be interesting because they are (for whatever reason) a relevant and popular band with access to traditional B&M distribution. So we can see (very approximately and inaccurate duh)
-what geographic locations paid the most average price
-what geographic locations which paid nothing
-what the average per-download price was
-highest & lowest price
and so on... esp. since it's not often that a band with as much exposure as Radiohead (don't even say Prince or I will slap you) experiments like this.
They should still ask people for a CC and bill them 0.0. That way at least the billing hassle is equal between the zero/non-zero cost alternatives. This hassle is really why many people pirate MP3s, it's too damn hard to deal with DRM billing proprietariness etc etc.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
It seems to work for Magnatune ( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/28/018247 ) :
http://www.magnatune.com/info/press/coverage/usa_today
You are faced with the choice of supporting the band, or not supporting the band. Many people need to support the band in order for it to stay afloat.
If you support the band, you have no reason to believe anyone else will support the band, but you are unable to spend the money you spent supporting the band on other things. So the rational decision is to refuse to support the band, and hope that someone else does.
This might work because people feel good about giving away money, but it wouldnt scale very well for the rest of the industry.
I like this idea, but I think it goes in a direction of a market that is already plummeting to zero code for recorded music (used primarily as a marketing resource to get fans to come to live shows or buy hard merchandise which isn't copied as easily or at a far greater cost).
I love MeetUp.com because I think it is a great way to get to know others in your area who have similar tastes as you do. But MeetUp has a few shortcomings in terms of active financial participation of those who are part of the group, so I think it falls short of being a strong market incentive to use as a direction for bands, public speakers, and others to find markets of interest.
There are websites where people can put up money to entice someone to visit their town, but I think they don't focus well on bands and speakers. Why don't we have more of a market support for live concerts, especially since they can be a "true market" resource for financing musicians and artist? Music has nearly infinite supply in MP3 format, with just the cost of bandwidth and hosting being the limiting factor for infinite supply (therefore zero or near zero market cost). Bands who produce great music at a low or no cost can produce a big profit if they entice people to go to their shows.
Why isn't there, yet, a mechanism for bartering for live music, between fans and artists?
Example:
Radiohead says they'll go on tour in the United States. www.BookABand.com (made up site, might exist) lets all the fans put up their own money to "vote" for a venue for Radiohead to play at (or a city, instead of a specific venue). I may love Radiohead, so I'd say I'll pay $200 per ticket to see them play, preferably in a smaller venue. Note that my wife and I pay outrageous sums of money to see artists play at The Pearl at the Palms Casino in Vegas (small venue, tickets can be $250 per seat for standing room) because we like the closer quarters and the opportunity after the show to talk to the musicians. Not everyone wants to pay that money, but we love small venues, so it is worth it to us.
Others can bid say $1, or $10 or $50 or whatever they feel is a cap. If Radiohead decides to pick that town, let's say Chicago, they can log in and say they'll play Chicago if they can raise $50,000 for the show. Venues can bid based on their capacity and what cut they want. We might have 10,000 Chicago Radiohead fans bidding between $1 and $500, 10 venues bidding between 1000 capacity and 10,000 capacity for a cut of say 10-30%, and Radiohead making the final decision. When they pick a venue, the rest is automatically calculated: fans pay what they think is a viable amount to pay, and the cut off occurs at the point that the band gets their $50,000+ total, with fans below the cut-off not attending. Anyone can raise or lower their bids up to approval by the band and the venue, and the band and venue can cancel their bid as well.
Sort of a Dutch auction of sorts, but with market forces providing the final cost and service provided.
Music sales may not be dead, but they're quickly heading in that direction. For every 1 album sold online, how many are pirated, given away, played on the radio or Pandora, or distributed at no cost or charge? 5? 10? 50? It would make sense for bands to try to make as much profit as possible -- based on their fans' financial desire -- and give more of their music away as a marketing cost.
Some bands, say my brother's band Maps & Atlases, might be happy to play for only $2500 and set up 10 dates for their fans to bid on around the country. They might get 250 people willing to pay $10 each, or 500 people willing to pay between $5 and $20, with venues kicking in a negative cost (meaning they'd pay the band instead of taking a per-ticket percentage) to bid for a semi-popular band such as them.
Don't you think there's something wrong with the band or their music if no one else supports them? Or maybe, there's something wrong with your taste:>
I think this (along with, unfortunately, corporate sponsorship) is the future of original music sales. Several years ago, after downloading the fantastic "Source Tags and Codes" album from the Band "And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead", I tried to email the lads and offer them $5 directly for the music.
I got a nice email from someone saying "thanks, but due to contract restrictions with the record label, they could not accept direct donations...please support us by purchasing our album from traditional sources" or something along those lines.
There is something 10x more satisfying by trying to give my hard earned money directly to the artist, and not to the scum-sucking music executives who have, for years, been stealing millions from naive, unsuspecting bands.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
That's not true at all. Major tours cost huge amounts of money to move around, and are only used for promotion for the records. Bands don't tour so much these days because more of that promotional money is spent on the videos that they make.
I agree with you though that Radiohead can afford to try this kind of stunt even if it fails, so they're not laying a lot on the line. It'll be valuable for less well off bands though to see if it works.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
"The traditional business model had been ruined by the Internet," said Grundy. "The industry is still trying to work out what on earth the new model or models should be and this is just one option."
Sucks when you've become redundant, eh? Authors are self-publishing; musicians can sell their songs on-line. They've found that they're doing most of the promotional work anyway, so why are you getting such a big cut? They've peaked behind the curtain and found there is no wizard. You evolve or you get run over.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Charging $0.00 to a card would be a bad financial move for anyone. Each credit card / charge transaction costs a fee.
Effectively running a $0.00 charge to a card would cost the band. The cost is whatever is under their merchant license contract (pennies on the dollar, sometimes considerably higher). This is the reason why you see signs in stores $10 minimum for credit card purchases, etc. They're trying to discourage frivilous charges (mostly among small businesses, larger corporations receive better rates).
The nice thing is you can pay nothing, download the music and see if you like it, if you're like me and don't know Radiohead from the Black Eyed Peas or Coldplay (I've heard of all of them, but never listened to any of their music). Then, if you like it, go back and buy it again with the price you consider fair, or go to a concert. Hopefully this works for them so other bands will give it a try.
Not that I should honor your remark by replying but WTF? I see you got fed on bullshit growing up. Hope you liked the taste.
1. I'm a Jew
2. I've moved away from downloading via torrent and/or emule to buying from the iTunes Store. I love the service and appreciate the fact that I can move my music in between 5 authorized machines. I have no feeling that I don't "own" my music and vids purchased there.
3. I'm finally going to be a proud Mac Owner as soon as my Apple Store card comes this week. Macbook, here I come! (non-sequiter but thought I'd throw it in).
4. I'm active in the local Jewish Community. Funny, I've never been invited to one of those meetings where we supposedly plot to overthrow the world or ruin some other country's economy. You should visit Israel sometime. The streets there are rather decidely NOT paved with gold.
5. On the other hand you run into assholes everywhere. Some of them are at Synagogue - some of 'em here on Slashdot. In fact, I seem to be addressing one right now.
6. So...if you have 10 dishonest used car salesmen and 9 of 'em are WASPs and one is a Jew, I take it your attitude is, "9 of 'em screwed ya, one of 'em Jew-ed ya", yes?
7. Fuck you.
Somebody once took me to a Radiohead show to get rid of an extra ticket. I wasn't expecting much, but I was curious enough to check it out. I have to say: They blew the doors off. They were a really, really, really solid live band, and it took me a bit by surprise. Since then I've gone back and listened to their records and gained a lot more respect for their music. It's still not necessarily my cup of tea, but if there are any mainstream rock bands working that deserve respect I would say that Radiohead is one of them.
Breakfast served all day!
It's called "back catalog" and Radiohead don't own any of it.
Of course the optimal strategy is to try to get everybody else to cough up but to pay nothing yourself.
for 1 pound. Fair price for a digital album in my book.
My Babylon
Actually, I think in this case the rational decision is to give them money because you don't know if anyone else will. If you actually enjoy Radiohead and want to support them, why would you rationally rely on "hope" as a means to their support rather than the logical, "I know Radiohead is getting support, because I supported them."
Now, if Radiohead announced, "Hey, we made 20 million off this idea! Thanks guys!" then I could see the Tragedy of the Commons becoming common.
Where's bad analogy man when you need him?
You can live without the Radiohead, but if you're starving and on a budget you may well think "Yeah, but the portions are HUGE!" is an excellent thing to say about a restaurant with terrible food.
It's good to finally see a band taking independent action against the industry.
Producers and labels would be nothing the artists, whether they are deemed insignificant or not, and they need to realise that.
I doubt it really means your own price, rather a small cost price and add what you feel is fair.
or like alot of shops (where i am) we just pay 2.9% of the total transactions..;. 2.9% of 0 is still 0.. so it wouldn't cost us anything.. although i am sure that if we did a million of them visa might give is a nasty gram...
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
That's very nice and I am sure it will net them more than they would if they released it the traditional way. But I'd like to see a completely independent band do the same. These guys are famous because their record companies have invested in them. Extremely few independent bands could support themselves on their music by letting their customers choose how much to pay for the music. They don't get enough attention and hype.
My point is that this doesn't prove that record companies are not needed. It just proves that the rich and famous can do whatever they want, and that has always been a well known fact. But those who only care about destroying the record companies and don't care about replacing them with a sustainable model, this is great, I guess.
Given that I had three copies of the CD, one for the office, one for the car, and one for home, prior to the rise of digital players, this is good for the market. It seems entirely reasonable for me to pay ten dollars, likely more than they would ever get from a label, and use the files how I wish.
This is the future of the market, which is why I feel that Apple should spin iTunes into the marketplace, and take their profits. An open marketplace for the music, and perhaps movie, industry would be fantastic.
They are holding back disk 2 of the record for people willing to buy the ~80USD version. So it's not all happy happy fans we love you.
CD 2
MK 1
DOWN IS THE NEW UP
GO SLOWLY
MK 2
LAST FLOWERS
UP ON THE LADDER
BANGERS AND MASH
4 MINUTE WARNING
Also, the only reason radiohead are in a position to do this is the label they used to be on. And while I think this is the perfect direction for them, but I don't think it makes sense for labels to disappear. Good labels filter out the garbage to find and promote the good bands (please don't make me list a bunch of good labels.)
Finally, the label actually does benefit from this because they will sell more copies of back catalog records as new people who have been living under rocks or graduating middle school will "discover" the band.
Anyway it's a lot to cope with in one day for a sad Radiohead obsessive like myself.
1) Download the album for free.
2) a. If the album is good you give $.
2) b. If you dislike the album don't pay for it.
2) c. If you only like certain tracks give $ for those tracks.
This way if you have high expectations for the album you won't be disappointed or likewise if you have low expectations you won't be disappointed either because you paid nothing. Those who file share it will either download it compulsively (which would happen regardless) or at least have a way to justify their activities.
If implemented correctly you should be able to justify how much the album is really worth.
If, on the other hand, it is worth something to you, you might want to send them something to encourage them to continue making music.
this logic might work on the local garage band I saw last week at the pub-- if me and a few dozen other people voluntarily paid for their album they might not need to go back to their jobs at Denny's. But it's hard for me to picture my mustering up a bit of change from my hurting budget affecting the release of the next radiohead album. I think I prefer the idea of having them be encouraged by my tick on their download counter rather than by my quarter anyway.
ôó
The problem with this model is that people haven't heard the album, and therefore don't know how good it is, so they can't decide in an informed fashion how much they want to pay for it. Even under the assumption that people will be happiest if they pay what they feel something is worth, I expect that people's happiness falls off more quickly on the overpaying side than the underpaying side, and that people expect this is general, so people will underpay to maximize their expected happiness if they don't know what they will feel something is worth.
I humbly disagree.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I agree with you, but just playing devil's advocate: isn't downloading it off BitTorrent equivalent to paying $0? If anything, you're saving them the cost of bandwidth.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Not that it's not admirable of Radiohead to do something like this, but they aren't the first musicians to work on an electronic donation based system. Here's another "record label" that is entirely donation based: http://www.quoteunquoterecords.com/
adventure-today.com
If influential bands continue to imitate radiohead like they do their with radiohead's music, this is a small spanner in works for the iTunes model.
Thom once wrote:
vee shall make zem PAY for zer mistake. ha ha ha. they vill never get avay viz ziss. vee are verrry verrry precious about are little KID A yu know and also zee others and you mr job jobs are no exception ya?
unbundle zis KID A record anda vee vill unbundle yor face.
H HA HA ha HA ha HA ha ha
(cough)
Will they be recruiting William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy to help promote it?
Does anyone know magnatune [www.magnatune.com]?
My guess is that the slashdot "groupthink" will be positive, and likewise, I'm broadly positive about the attitude behind this.
However, in the details, it ends up leaving me high and dry.
Downloads, for me, are for those cases where "there's only one or two tracks on the CD I really like". If an album is any good, I vastly prefer to buy the CD - I enjoy the physical product, the artwork, lyrics/inlay notes, the free backup, the future-proof lossless quality.
On the other hand, I've no interest in vinyl - I've got no decks!
So with a choice of "buy the mp3s" or "buy the CD and vinyl boxset", I don't really want either :(
Shame they're abandoning the middle ground of selling regular CDs, which I'd guess still represents the majority of music purchasing in the western world today.
(And no, this isn't one of these "and thus I feel justified in pirating" excuse-posts. I spend more of my money on music than any other form of leisure/luxury; over £100/mo isn't uncommon. And I'm in a band who has cd and mp3 sales of our own, and we've been at the wrong end of Russian allofmp3 style sites ("wholly legitimate" cry the slashdotters - legally, perhaps, on a technicality, but not morally... they're not sending any money through) and p2p. So, if I like the sound of this, I will pay for it, but I will be slightly miffed there is no way to get a CD without also wasting money (and space) on unwanted vinyl.)
Somewhat uniquely so, even.
Kid-proof tablet..
I used to manage a small family restaurant. After years of urging the owners that we should take credit cards as an option (we also did birthday parties in our fun center and bad checks were a major problem), they finally broke down and got a credit card machine. At least for us, the terms were (going on memory, I might be off a bit): 50 cents per transaction plus a fixed percentage (varied per card with Visa and Mastercard being 2%, AmEx Business class cards being 5% and the rest falling somewhere between) and 25 cents for swiping an invalid card (whether the card was expired, over the limit, totally invalid or just a credit network we didn't use), 15 cents to modify a previous transaction (to, say, add the tip you added when you signed the receipt onto the charge), etc. There were also fees for checking and reserving a certain portion of credit (say, a security deposit on a rental), but we didn't have to deal with that, so I don't remember what they cost. We were also charged $1 to print out a summary so we could make sure the tills balanced out right.
So... a $1 transaction with a personal Discover card would cost us a 50 cent transaction fee plus another 4 cents (the fixed percentage). If someone used an over the limit card and then switched to a valid card, that transaction would then take up 79 cents of that dollar. That's before we figure in the cost of the product, utilities, storage, labor, etc. I estimated that any transaction under $5 or so was costing us money when done with a credit card. Of course, that's selling a tangible product rather than a collection of infinitely duplicable bits and also take into account that we did less than $1000 a day in credit card transactions versus someplace huge like a big box retailer who can get more favorable terms.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Anybody got a torrent for this? Can we say $0.00 for the price? :)
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Yeah, vinyl is real hard to download over KaZaA and burn afterwards. It's the best attack yet against P2P Free.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"You just pay the band however much you think the downloads are worth and they'll be happy" I say 0.00, ya think they're still happy?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
What would Scott Tenorman pay?
Because your support alone, is not enough to keep them afloat. You have to "hope" either way that the other parties will donate.
If it's worth nothing ($0.00) to you, don't download it, because it's worth nothing to you and therefore you have no need of it.
This is the first major label major band defection that I can recall since Trent Reznor, and this will be sizably more influential as Radiohead still has a career left.
The real problem with getting rid of major labels is how artists will handle promotion. Radiohead would not have become this big without mass-media coverage, radio station payola, and other forms of promotion. Independent artists have more freedom and make more money, but how do they promote outside a local area?
technical writing / development
The only thing that it says about the band is that none of their fans have taken game theory.
Do it like this... Offer them zero dollars for the album. Download it. Listen to it. THEN "Buy" it again, this time paying them what you truly think its worth.
That makes me cry -- not at all.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I've always said, if artists I liked would simply put up a paypal link on their page, where I knew all the money went to them... I'd gladly pay even list price for a lot of cd's. Knowing that only 1$ of my 20$ payment goes to the artist, and the rest to the MAFIAA, has long deterred me from purchasing any new music.
SO... how much of my price goes straight to radiohead? And how much goes to the MAFIAA (if any)? The article wasn't really clear about that point... Anyone care to enlighten me/us?
I think this is absolutely great of Radiohead to do, and I give them props for putting their fans first. However, from the perspective of hoping that this moves the industry in the same direction, I don't see that happening. This addresses the problem of "how to cut out the RIAA" from existing, known bands. However, it does not account for how to generate new interest in the marketplace without the RIAA. Currently, 95%+ of the artists out there that most people have actually heard of all still deal with the RIAA.
iTunes and other online distribution stores are a start. However, there still needs to be a better way to get lesser-known artists' music broadcast to as many people as possible, while still cutting the RIAA out of the loop. The answer to that dilemma? Well, I guess I'm not really sure. =/
A community-oriented lyrics site
Really?
You do know that MagnaTune has requested donations for albums for years and done quite well for themselves and their artists? Admittedly they do ask for a minimum of $5 (most likely because for very small amounts it really isn't worth the trouble to process), but routinely get paid much more than that. Artists get a 50% cut of all sales (far better than any normal record company). But you can download 128k mp3's for free, and even use them in non-commercial podcasts.
I've bought a couple albums from them in the past couple of years, and just now I see I need to go back and give them more money since I see some more stuff I want.
The Residents have also had an online store for the past couple of years funded entirely by the honor system: if you need a track, download it and pay them: they only request that you pay more than $3 so that they don't get eaten by billing costs. And, of course, they have also had the "extra special cd" available for most of their works in the past few years (package with bonus CD, book, numbered edition, etc).
They seem to be doing very well despite being the most obscure successful band.
Sure, Radiohead may "lose" some sales... some people will download their music and not pay: most of these would be people who would have never listened to their music anyway. People who were willing to pay cash money for a CD will appreciate being able to pay less online (and not finance MegaMart Music Stores) and even appreciate the convenience of getting the music from their home. Completists will appreciate the bonus edition and will gladly buy it: possession is a major part of being a Completist.
I see no reason why this won't work for known bands with dedicated fans. It would be harder for the little obscure bar band to survive like this, but, then, most of them aren't making much from CD sales either, so it isn't clear that they would actually lose money.
wtf? Radiohead being one of the bands whose albums I consistently listen to all the way through I was all about this, especially given that there would almost certainly be a higher-quality master on vinyl (due to its inability to participate in the loudness war), but $80 is crazy. If I knew for a fact that it was a fantastic master, with lots of dynamic range and absolutely no clipping I'd be willing to pay $40 for one of the two formats, but with no such guarantee--or any information at all for that matter--I can't imagine what makes this worth that price. Although I applaud basically giving away MP3s (because they're worthless), you can hardly call charging more than double price for a given media and then forcing us to buy two together getting it right.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Actually it is true these days.
In the Olden Days, tours were used as a way to promote album sales: record companies heavily subsidized tours and they routinely lost a ton of money. The logic was that they would more than make that money back with merchandising and album sales. (When the record company was funding the tour, they got a cut of every T-shirt sold.)
For most acts these days, however, touring is the only way they make money: they make less money on plastic discs than they used to, but they get to keep the tour profits (these are not shared with the record company, since the label rarely supports the tour at all). T-shirt sales go to the band and maybe the venue, but not the label. Alas, CD's sold at the show routinely make less money than those sold at Amazon... but that's because the band doesn't get a break on their own material while large vendors like Amazon and Walmart do.
There are hundreds of musicians just giving their music away for free without even trying to charge anybody. It's just that Radiohead has the money, connections and reputation to get people to write about them.
Instead of selling $20CDs to hardcore fans, now they get to sell $80 boxes and still smell of roses. Nifty trick.
How about we all generally say $5 for the album? Or, any other amount. 5 seems right to me.
I suggest you read Slashdot
"They're asking to be paid a fair price, not to be stiffed."
I think that's perfectly reasonable.
Now what about if I listen and decide it was a waste of my time? What would be fair compensation there?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
we do about 100k a month in charges - but considering the smallest charge normaly is >500$ this might be why we are on a straight % instead of all the annoying little fees...
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
How realistic would a $2 album be?
On a serious note, I'd love to get both vinyl and CD. Granted, you can say "Well, you always could, they just weren't bundled," but finding vinyl readily available and at convenient locations is a rarity. Would this count as a single sale or a double sale though?
I'd like to offer a perspective different from the PR stunt that people seem to think it is.
Perhaps they are just artists. Granted, they've probably made enough money from their prior albums to no longer need to worry about money. They are treating their music like a piece of art. Real art should be free and open to the public (which is why public museums in London are free to the public). If this was their intention then I applaud Radiohead.
Personally, I'm a fan but not the biggest fan. I would've liked to sample the album beforehand but their reputation and previous albums are good enough for me to put money on the line.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
1. Being the only one of its kind: the unique existing example of Donne's handwriting.
2. Without an equal or equivalent; unparalleled.
3.
1. Characteristic of a particular category, condition, or locality: a problem unique to coastal areas.
2. Informal. Unusual; extraordinary: spoke with a unique accent.
The bolded part shows why you're wrong. But if that weren't enough...
http://www.answers.com/topic/unique?cat=technology
"USAGE NOTE For many grammarians, unique is the paradigmatic absolute term, a shibboleth that distinguishes between those who understand that such a term cannot be modified by an adverb of degree or a comparative adverb and those who do not. These grammarians would say that a thing is either unique or not unique and that it is therefore incorrect to say that something is very unique or more unique than something else. Most of the Usage Panel supports this traditional view. Eighty percent disapprove of the sentence Her designs are quite unique in today's fashions. But as the language of advertising in particular attests, unique is widely used as a synonym for "worthy of being considered in a class by itself, extraordinary," and if so construed it may arguably be modified. In fact, unique appears as a modified adjective in the work of many reputable writers. A travel writer states that "Chicago is no less unique an American city than New York or San Francisco," for example, and the critic Fredric Jameson writes "The great modern writers have all been defined by the invention or production of rather unique styles." Although these examples of the qualification of unique are defensible, writers should be aware that such constructions are liable to incur the censure of some readers. See Usage Notes at absolute, equal, infinite."
You are arguing for an absolute definition where it does not exist.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
If only there was some way to destroy everything you're not a fan of... if only there were more people like you...
Software patents delenda est.
Now, if Radiohead announced, "Hey, we made 20 million off this idea! Thanks guys!" then I could see the Tragedy of the Commons becoming common.
Good point. In order to make sure this thing works, I'm going to refrain from paying them.
Considering that most bands are lucky to see two or three cents per CD sale, I'd say that won't be too hard. I'm going to explain the recording industry for you folks. Follow along and see if you kids can keep up. Let's pretend for a few minutes that you're a musician. You bust your butt gigging, playing all over town and one day some guy walks up to you and says, "Hi! I'm with (fill in name of record company here), and we'd really like to sign you to a recording contract." Well, you get all excited and you sign your deal with the devil.
The devil says "Come to my recording studio and we'll cut the record." Once you get there, they've got the studio lined up, the producer, and a few other people to "help you" make your record. If you ask about how much is going to cost, you get told, as is standard in the recording industry that "it will come out of the profits." Then you cut your album and "you have to promote it". If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits". Now that you have to market your album, you have to go on tour. That means a bus, lights, roadies, stage, sound equipment, etc. If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits".
While you're on tour, you need to have T-shirts, posters, bumper sticker, etc. You also need to have hot dogs, twinkies, beer, and cokes for people to consume during the concert. If you ask how much that's going to cost...you guessed it kids, "it comes out of the profits". By the time they're through pulling all the costs out of "the profits", there usually aren't any profits left, which means all that the artist gets is what ever they get as a signing bonus. Not the advance - the signing bonus - since the advance comes "out of the profits", too.
The way that this works out is that if you're lucky, the artist on any given album might see 1 or 2 cents of the $16.99 you pay for CD of music at Wal-Mart. Given that the Internet is the ideal distribution medium for music, I'd rather just go to the artists web site and buy the songs directly from them. Then the artist would get the whole $16.99 for the album instead of $0.02. But you see, the RIAA can't allow that because in that $16.97 lies their profit margins. Without them, it's a brave new world for digital music.
Why do you and I have to pay a third party middleman to broker the transaction for nothing more than a song? Worse yet, we are required to continue to pay this middleman who threatens to sue both the consumer and the musician when we try to cut him out of the transaction. If the artist tries to sell their songs on the website the RIAA will try to sue them for contract violations. If you and I try to download the music, we get sued. The only reason for this is that it leaves the big, fat RIAA profit margin intact.
The RIAA complains that their sales are down and points an accusing finger at "piracy". I'd like to take a moment to dispel that myth. When Napster was operating at it's peak, music sales were up 20% without the RIAA doing any additional marketing. Viral, word-of-mouth would spread quickly about new bands and good new interesting music. People were buying CD's because they'd get a taste of some stuff and like it. Then they'd go to the store, find the artist and buy some stuff. Now, there's no place to share that isn't full of viruses, worms, trojans, fake files, etc. No more free marketing RIAA - you pretty much litigated the goose that laid the golden egg out of existence.
Compounding the problem is that the RIAA is key in determining what gets pushed to the public. Frankly, I think that they've lost the pulse. We don't care about Brittany Spears, although my husband was caught peering at her photos when she got snapped sans the undies. For some reason, the music industry has decided to cater to 14 year old girls. Why? I don't really know. When's the last time you saw a 14 year old that had more than $20 of disposable income at any given moment? If you
HDGary secures my bank
What the hell are you doing here? You don't belong here.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"You're a douche. That's a douche word. Why don't you just say 'raw material' or something?"
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/mf_pennyarcade
I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
TH#EE CHEE## F## #HE L##DNE## #A#!
(*i am yelling you stupid lameness filter*)
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
It does, it's just not the price for the music. The price of the music is 0. This is the lowest price the seller is willing to accept. Any amount paid to the band is not for the music itself, but rather for "goodwill". It's a donation, the same way giving money to your church is.
Your mistake is to assume that standard game theoretic notions of "rationality" apply to human beings. There's ample evidence to the contrary.
40 quid isn't bad for two CDs, two LPs, digital download, a nice book and shipping.
It's assinine to be crapping on about "dynamic range" and so forth. Given the albums provenance it will probably sound like Radiohead want it to sound which is where the actual value lays for people who like their music.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Just need to make that clear, you think it is fine, others don't. I personally don't like it. I'll kick them a couple of bucks to round out the dollar amount, but unless they're stellar, that's all they get. And yes I have worked in the food service industry and my sister still does. Just because their wages suck doesn't justify customers trying to make up for the employers' decision to pay their employees like crap. It is a stupid loophole in the minimum wage system that they should fix. I wish someone would drop by my desk every day and hand me a $20 just for being here but they don't.
Really?
Yeah, really. Stephen King did this with a story called "The Plant" (see the Jon Katz Slashdot article!). He published the story directly to the net, one chapter at a time, and told people to pay what they thought it was worth. End result? Not enough people paid, the story wasn't finished, and it isn't even available for download anymore on King's official site these days.
Now, say what you will about King's stories, but he has more than a few fans. The fact is that few will pay if they don't have to. Who doesn't like getting something for nothing? And if it is a question of people preferring a physical book to a downloadable file, then the same thing will apply to music as some people prefer a CD to compressed files.
We'll see. I'm willing to be wrong, but history doesn't seem to indicate that I will be.
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
not going to happen.
Radiohead is one of the few bands I like enough to buy their music without hearing it first. I bought the download for $5.00 ($6.00 after their fees), which is what I usually pay for a used CD anyway. This is a win win for me - I get it on release day, I'm supporting the band directly, and I'm not paying $15.00 for it.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
TFA implies/says bands get $0.72 (USD. Snicker, Eh?) from a CD sale. It's hard to imagine poeple not giving them a dollar.
I don't even like their music that much but am tmepted to give them a couple of bucks, "just cause".
Need Mercedes parts ?
I can't seem to find on Radiohead's website which format(s) the digital download is encoded in.
I suppose MP3 is a given due to its widespread acceptance, but I'd personally be more inclined to pay more for an album encoded in FLAC or similar.
in seattle there is a coffee shop that does not charge, they accept payment based on what you think you should pay or want to pay.
Jane Siberry has been doing this for years without anyone paying her much attention - to the point that I the last show I went to she had an honour system even at the merchandise desk - you took an EP, you paid what you thought it was worth.
Of course you're going to like it.
then there probably wouldn't be much point in music in the first place.
There is more to life than game theory, thankfully.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
What if you could make the donation conditional? E.g. "I donate $5 provided the band releases no less than three new songs approved by [independent-rating-agency] in the next two years." The money could be held in trust and refunded (possibly with interest) if the band doesn't meet the conditions for whatever reason -- including the case where not enough others provided similar support.
Fans would probably be much more likely to donate if they could be sure of getting something in return, or their money back if things don't work out. Theoretically this could even scale up for very large projects, like motion pictures or medical R&D.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I'll pay $20 ... for OK Computer 2.
It took me about 4 tries before I could pre-purchase that album due to the extremely flaky website. Its a shame because its a great concept, but if it fails, it will probably be due to the awful execution. You would imagine that the creators of "Ok Computer" would know some decent web designers...
In that case, why bother voting?
Why? If this is honestly an experiment to see how this will do why not let it run wild?
Oh, I know, I know. You guys want Radiohead to walk away with a few sacks of cash and thumb your nose at the RIAA? That's all fine and well (not really, but that's a topic for a different discussion) but have you stopped to consider what happens to music as a total if the human nature of taking what can be had for free holds?
If Radiohead, a fairly popular band, can not stand up on it's own merits even with filesharing and such doesn't it mean that their new model is broken and a new approach should be taken? Granted, I can understand if it's a small band just trying to pay rent and feed themselves but if Radiohead can't pull this off and if the RIAA gets it's balls clipped as a lot of the users here are suggesting then it's high time we find a model that works or get ready for some really shitty music to be the norm in the near future.
Whether or not music fans realize this: people who aren't paying for their music in some fashion are the ones who are going to bring down the music industry. Not the RIAA. Radiohead has and would continue to survive just fine with the RIAA. If they can't pull this off with leeches and all what does it have to say for their form of digital distribution since we have others on here claiming that most bands hardly make a nickle per album sold from a RIAA label but we know these same bands roll in cash?
I also want to note that those who are talking about throwing down a few bucks with never having heard the album and some even proclaiming that they've never heard of Radiohead but are still willing to pitch in are also a problem here. Having this experiment in music go down like it would if this thing happens everyday is important to mark the impact of such deals on the consumer and the musician. Again, if people do things to artificially make this seem like a winning plan then someone in the future is going to pay the hard way by finding out that so much of it was only charity and had nothing to do with the music.
I'd rather put good money down for good music and support that model instead of just helping to bend the numbers so I can thumb my nose at the RIAA.
I hope others see the logic in this too. An experiment that has it's data bent to support an end result artificially is only going to hurt everyone involved in the end.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
"People who were willing to pay cash money for a CD will appreciate being able to pay less online (and not finance MegaMart Music Stores)"
Would the mega music mart even carry RadioHead? Isn't this more likely to hurt the few small local music stores that are left then a MegaMart.
Just a suggestion since I am not a RadioHead fan. In fact I don't think I have ever heard them.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I don't know if I've ever seen a more confused example of profits and revenues.
Profit is what you earn - above all of your costs.
Revenue is the total amount you take in (ie: the gross)
If you pay them out of profits, that's easy. Because you have to MAKE profit first. If you have to pay them out of revenues, that's easy too. Because you have to take money in before you can pay them. It's the fees/payments/costs you have to pay no matter what that you have to watch out for. And I suspect, most of these costs you outline are done in that manner.
Perhaps not knowing the difference contributes to these idiots entering into these contracts in the first place?
I don't know about anyone else, but being offered free music DOES make me want to give them money and support. On the other hand, being told I have to pay $13 bucks for a half an hour of music on a plastic disc that will inevitably scratch and break makes me want to steal the album. I can't think of a smarter thing to do than to offer your music for free to the general public anyway. So everyone in the world downloads it and doesn't pay a cent? Now everyone knows who they are and what their music is like and they go out and buy all the other albums and concert tickets and get the exposure any musician should want. Seems like that's been the smart idea all along, versus the Metallica route of suing their fans for trying to hear their music for free. I hope this does unhinge the record industry and buries the ridiculous propaganda and outrageous pricing that has controlled the music community for decades now. VIVA RADIOHEAD!
I'm doubt that Radiohead need much to "keep them afloat". They've had 6 big selling albums (including a couple of very big selling ones) and plenty of successful singles, tours and the like. They have enough money to record and publish an album independently of any label. I imagine they could comfortably make precisely £0 on sales of this album and still keep going without any difficulty.
I know how it feels... reminds me of the time I went to a Viper concert, and the opening acts were some awful local thrash bands. Even if they didn't suck, that's a completely different style.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The post highlights some very important research in game theory that show that the Homo Economicus model is severely flawed. This is important as our entire free market, capitalist system is based on assumptions from this model. Most people are more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than pure selfish gain. That being the case, cooperative systems that allow people to punish inequality are more suited to real human nature than our current system, which rewards selfishness and increases inequality.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's the standard conundrum - which one will make you more money, having 100% of a smaller pie (do it yourself), or a small percentage of a larger pie (having another company do it for you)? I've tried it both ways, and make more money doing it myself with the smaller pie.
I think that the real problem with "piracy" is that most people don't think of software (which is essentially intangible) as a "good" in the same way that they think of a pair of Levis.
My bet is that if you asked the average person if it's acceptable to shoplift a pair of jeans, the overwhelming response would be "No, it's not OK." If you asked if it's OK to download software/music without paying, the response is more likely to be "Sure"
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
"Something is either unique or it isn't. There's no "Somewhat unique", or "very unique"."
This is trivially disprovable. Any collection of objects can have a mixture of unique and shared elements. What do you call the result other than 'partially unique'? Take a Linux distribution, or human DNA, for instance. We have unique bits - a tiny fraction of the whole - and we have this vast sea of shared bits.
It seems to me that it's perfectly sensible to say '25% of this collection is unique', and therefore to say 'this collection as a whole is 25% unique'.
An entity which was '100% unique' would be utterly alien to us, by the way. We'd have absolutely no referents for it at all. It probably wouldn't even exist in our spacetime universe, because by so doing it would share phenomena with many other objects and thus compromise its uniqueness.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Well, if nobody can download the Radiohead album from anywhere except via BitTorrent then that kindof kills there business model where the site was going to ask for a donation.
If people download the album from another place they aren't going to see any donations.
They need to get their site fixed so that it is no longer getting slashdotted or else they areen't going to prove anything.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
This is true, but there are many ways of supporting a band. Seeing them live, buying merch directly from them, turning others on to their music, wearing a beaten-up old t-shirt with their name on it, performing drunken, off-key renditions of their songs to anyone who will listen
You bring up a good point about the "tragedy of the commons" though, and I don't have the background in economics to counter with anything intelligent, other than my gut feeling that tells me if something is truly "worth it," enough people will support it.
A good example is my favorite Internet Radio station, which is entirely listener-supported and commercial free. A lot of people I have told about it think I'm crazy for sending them money every month when I could just listen to it for "free." And I'm sure a lot of people do just that. I did for a good year or so before I decided to start supporting them. But I have been supporting them for a couple of years now, and others must be as well since they are still in business, playing music 24/7.
The reason I support them (and I assume the reason others do as well) is simply because I value what they do, and I would regret it horribly if they went quiet one day and I did nothing to prevent that. They still might go quiet despite my support, but I can't control that. I can only do what I can do.
And this brings up another point. This idea of voluntarily supporting the music you like might not be enough to pay for all the payolla, Lear jets and cocaine that seems to be necessary to keep the traditional "music industry" going, but maybe we don't need all that. Maybe we just need people who love to create art (and we've had those since the stone age) and people who love to listen to/watch/feel/smell/taste it to recognize how much they value each other. It may not work in all cases, but I'll bet it would allow more musicians to give up their day jobs than the current system.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Of course since they are distributing these files themselves, they can keep 100% of the profits. Say a typical deal has the artist getting 2% of a sale, the rest going to the record company. So for a 12.99 CD, that is approx 26 cents. So say per 1000 CDs sold using the old model, Radiohead would get $259.80. Say that w/ this new scheme, they average one dollar per album download. That would mean $1000 straight to them, 3.849 times more per 1000 units than under the old system. Not bad. It just goes to show how poor the old system is. It takes such a low "market value" per album for them to come out ahead.
I thought it was interesting yet simple. It may be experiencing load problems now it's new but it's not probably not worth investing a boatload of money to cater for a peak server load that will only be experienced at initial launch.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
You'll notice that he's NOT finished that story since people were not paying.
The bands always make more money off of the tours because there are less middle men between the consumers and the artists. That and their contracts for tours are significantly better than recording contracts.
You can stiff Radiohead all day long, but the karma police will be out to get you. You'll be living your life as a paranoid andriod, trying to come to grips with kittens tied to sticks in frozen winter shit. And then one day, you'll change your price from $0 to $5 or $10, and everything will be in its right place.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
Will Finally redeemable for something of worth ?
Dual Century Programming: Yeah I know
Well, their website doesn't offer free Mp3's, but their music was once quite available on the late mp3.com (before the remake), and they've got a myspace page (yeah, it's myspace... but still) with music and videos etc. The cool thing, though, is that they send you a free (yes free, including shipping) disc if send a request through their website. I remember sending through the request last year and then forgetting about it, only to be very pleasantly surprised when a demo disk (I think it had somewhere between 5 and 7 songs, which is decent) arrived.
They're a good band, so I recommend checking them out on their website. Don't be cheap though, if you get the demo disc and really like it - try and hit a tour (if you're a European or in the area) or buy a CD.
That strategy is optimal if it's congruent with your personal values; otherwise there is an attached, non-monetary cost.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
One of the things I like about this idea is that I can download the album for free and see if I like it. If I do, I can always choose to pay them later, or maybe save that money and go see them live (Radiohead tickets are very hard to get, so you're basically paying ebay prices). If it sucks, I can delete it and be on my way.
I came here for a good argument
That would work pretty well, assuming the rating agency is well picked.
It's been a long time since I bought new music. The combination of my increasing age, my decreasing disposable income, and the increasing rate of defective by design CDs has made me leery of the whole thing. So, were Radiohead putting out a traditional CD, I would pay nothing for it, and likely not even hear any of the music from it.
Now, I'd really like to support a distribution model that offers a way to let me pick up music at a more reasonable cost than the price of a CD in Australia. However, the web site is extremely scant on what I would consider to be critical details:
Any single one of these questions would make or break the deal. I won't download WMVs. I won't use some proprietary tool to download. I won't pay for something that I may not be able to get.
Of course, I can opt to pay nothing at all, and thus be safe from any of these problems: the most I will be out is the time spent discovering the answer to those questions. But if I pay nothing at all, I'm not really showing my support for the basic idea. Is it worse, then, to pay nothing and download it, or to just ignore the whole thing? Which is more likely to cause the scheme to be abandoned rather than refined in the ways that would make it more palatable?
1. go to rh site :-)
2. proceed to name my own price
3. enter -1000000000000 dollars
4. Profit !!!!!!!!!!!!
hey its so simple and stupid could happen sadly
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
Or - if you really liked it (or are just the sort of music fan who likes to collect physical objects) - you could buy that vinyl/CD box set (did they say it was $80.00!?!? Holy shit!) I like that aspect too. There are those who will spend the money to get the premium (how's the beer over in Koln, BigA?); use them to generate revenue from the shiny discs.
But really, the thing I like most about this is seeing a band is choose a model that suits them, sort of like a FOSS developer choosing the license that suits the project he is working on. I hope more artists who have fulfilled their contractual obligations and new artists as well will explore their options and use some of their creativity to market themselves to their fans.
And I hope those SOBs who call us theives rot.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Not only a Radiohead fans are irrational and unpredictable using game theory. It turns out even game theory professors are.
Interestingly, the whois lookup for inrainbows.com shows that the registrant is "Sandbag Ltd", a British company that produces ethically manufactured, fair trade fashion.
I can't wait to download this off of OiNK! Sure, I could probably download it for free from them, but... oh... you mean I don't have to pay for it either way?
Good question, why bother voting? If political change were the sole reason why people voted, turnout would be much lower. Luckily, people seem to enjoy voting, or do it out of some sort of "civil duty".
Actually, this is not something new, only new in this day and age. The Singer / Songwriter Keith Green did this about 2 decades ago:
(quoted from Wikipedia)
In 1979, after negotiating a release from his contract with Sparrow, Green surprised many in the music industry by refusing to charge money for concerts or albums. Keith and Melody mortgaged their home to privately finance Green's next album, So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt. The album, which featured a guest appearance by Bob Dylan, was offered through mail-order and at concerts for a price determined by the purchaser. As of May 1982, Green had shipped out more than 200,000 units of his album - 61,000 for free. Subsequent albums included The Keith Green Collection (1981) and Songs For The Shepherd (1982).
Note how his CONCERTS were free (pay as you like) as well! I wonder if Radiohead would do that?
Cheers,
Jeffrey
PS -- Quote source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Green
Yeah, I'm really confused by the choices available.
I don't want vinyl. Vinyl sucks.
I do want all the music.
Neither option fits what I'm looking for. So I'm going to wait and see if other options become available.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Excel spreadsheet I had for deciding how much to pay?
Kid A debuted at Number 1 in the USA. Also, they wouldn't be forced to work with the RIAA, and Thom has already released a non-riaa record.
Between that and the previous mentioned 6 records instead of 7, you are pretty ill informed to be "Insightful"
Glad you're a trail of the dead fan. I've been a huge fan since the early days when they played house parties here in Austin. Over the years, I've seen a lot of sensitivity they've had over people pirating their music. At least one of their CD covers carries the phrase, "Please don't steal our music." And now their publishing is called 'Steal our music.' I recall a rumor that one of their close friends was ostracized when a copy of their 2005 album was leaked on the internet before it had even really gotten out of the studio.
Source Tags and Codes is not a bad album, but I highly recommend their previous two. Madonna and their self-titled first album. Those links are supposed to let you see the album on iTunes where you can purchase it legally.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I agree with your prediction on what people will pay on something speculative is less than if they're bidding on a known-quantity.
I think they're rolling the dice on a business model that doesn't try to squeeze their fans for album sales. I think they're looking at their royalties from all their past albums and figuring that it's chump change compared to their touring income. So with this new album, they're probably thinking it would be nice if it got into the ears of as many people as possible to get them all excited about paying >$100 apiece to go to their concerts. And if they make some money on the downloads, it's icing on the cake.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
as long as your doing summary statistics you should suggest average, low, high and standard deviation
Cool store, I posted url on "sweclockers" for others to check, if only it carried ALL music aswell :)
Radiohead aside, I really think a reasonable price for a media-less album downloaded by the end-user is between $2 and $4 dollars per album.
With modern recording technology, cutting an album has become VERY cheap. In fact, while studying music in college, my brother used to make recordings in the basement of his house with minimal adjustments or enhancements made to the space. Basically an Ebay soundboard, a few decent microphones, a few decent amps and cabinets and he was good to go. Oh yeah, and a TON of knowledge about how sound works and what sounds good.
Online storage and hosting is becoming cheap enough that it really wouldn't cost a band much to host their own 'store'. The best part is that it only gets more expensive as they get more popular (and need more space/bandwidth).
Even having your own pressed CD to sell at shows has gotten much cheaper. Check out current pricing on cd duplicators at B&H (bhphotovideo.com). For under $2k, you can have a really nice set-up and the ability to stamp enough CDs to sell at your shows. And you can make (reasonably speaking) as many or as few as you need. Sure, when you get super popular, then you can contract with someone to press the discs for you.
Desktop publishing has gotten simple enough that basically anyone can design posters, t-shirts and mousepads; and find someone to manufacture them on the cheap/on-demand.
Record companies as we know them are basically fscked.
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I attended a Renaissance festival last weekend. The entertainers who perform there make money mostly from tips (and maybe a bit of merchandising). Tipping is completely optional, yet many of the same acts return year after year. My understanding is that the performers typically don't have day jobs because they travel too much. They make their living by entertaining people and then asking them to put money in a hat so they can keep doing it. The rational person from the Tragedy of the commons won't tip, but apparently many people aren't rational. This makes me think that Radiohead's idea might result in good profits for the band.
The psychology involved may be different; entertainers at the Renaissance Festival typically hold out their hats and thank people as they leave the stage. It isn't easy to walk away from an entertainer asking for your support, especially if you just enjoyed their show. Downloading from a website lets people feel much more anonymous. Guilt attached to a person seems worse than guilt attached to a download link.
Its been 10 years since OK Computer was released. Can you guys PLEASE produce another good album?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
... because your vote alone, is an incredibly small amount of what would be needed for your candidate to be elected, indeed, your presence is entirely undetectable in the result.
:-)
Thus, don't vote.
Just let me choose for you
Herve S.
There are indeed gradients of unique. All are the first of their kind. The question of how unique they are is the % they differ from known examples.
... more unique. (I saw one in a mall once. It was later removed.)
I came up with my own mixed drink. Sake & Moxie. It's unique. But since it's just two known items mixed, it's only unique by a small percentage.
Talking Trashcans are
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Vinyl sounds better than CD sounds better than MP3 sounds better than Ringtones.
a well engineered Vinyl player will last for decades - mine has lasted nearly 30 years so far. CD players crap out between 5 and 10 years
Yes more choices would be nice - but frankly if you want a CD buy a download and burn it to a CD
Personally I plan to buy a download first & then upgrade to Vinyl, if I really like it
There are few heavy duty vinyl albums for less than £25 ($50 approx) here. The notable exception being White Stripes - Icky Thump - that was both a great album and good value £14 for a double album. The drums and guitar sound so... live
Sit down and listen to the both - really good music is compulsive
yeah not a terribly subtle joke - but better to lighten up a bit...
if "Faith" could be proved with facts - would it still be faith? So why does "Faith" try to present beliefs as fact? -
Simple.
Once some of the brouhaha clears out, there will be some 7 music sites. iTunes, Amazon, your choice of a few more.
Combine slightly lower grade files like 96kbps for free with a weighted ranking system.
Modern intelligent users are capable of ranking good music, and when the music you rate up is also agreed with by other respected raters, you get a "postive respect factor" of some name, much like Karma here.
Then the exhausted new members simply try the highly rated stuff. To go from free 96kbps to 256 plus hardcopy CD plus premium notes on bands they like, they can buy the premium materials.
We're all a little shell shocked at the moment... All we really did at the music store was stare at the selection in the category, buy our two favorites, and take a chance on some random third album.
Within 8-12 more years, 30+% of the internet userbase will feel just as comfortable doing that from online stores.
Then we'd cue the discussions about how dumb the Respected Reviewers are, and form our own "find the hidden gems" clubs squirrelling around the "undiscovered bands"... who then get boosted.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm a Radiohead fan but I think it's irresponsible of the band offering a box that contains both the vinyl and CD versions - how many people these days actually need both? Why not just create two versions of the box, one with the vinyl LP and the other with the CD, and save on some of the waste?
Incidentally, I don't need gimmicks either. Extra tracks are sometimes nice but I research my music well and never end up buying duff albums - therefore every CD I buy these days I consider great value for money.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Two college kids set up Fairtunes (Salon article) during the Napster heyday so music downloaders could contribute money directly to musicians. They received a pittance in donations despite a lot of publicity.
Fairtunes was divorced from the act of grabbing an MP3 from Napster, so perhaps the people who claimed they weren't pirates and intended to donate money conveniently never got around to paying. Maybe by making the donation part of the download process, Radiohead will get more people to pay a decent price... but I wouldn't bet on people's ethics on the Internet.
=S
It doesn't necessarily need many people to support them for the band to stay afloat. It needs a few people to support them with large amounts. How much does a band need to stay afloat anyway? Probably they just need enough money to support themselves, their families, and to pay for studio time, musical gear, and website hosting. Maybe they can even pay a few people to manage and promote them (i.e. have these people work for *them* rather than the other way around, as the RIAA would have it). Not really huge amounts. They may not get rich, but if they're true artists, that won't bother them.
In a lot of ways, this is how the dance music model works. The average Joe going to a club hardly buys any of the music directly (apart from the odd compilation, but a lot of the times DJs will give these out for free). He pays to get in, and drink at the club, money which goes to the club owner and event promoters. They then pay the DJs. The DJs use this to buy music (plus their own funds, most DJs are amatuer). So only a select group of people actually pay the music makers anything. But they tend to pay a reasonable amount (especially if buying vinyl).
There's no DRM on downloads, and it would be easy for DJs to share music amongst each other, but most of the smart ones know this would be foolish. If they don't support the producers, there'll be a lot less music around to buy (and most DJs buy a *lot* of music). Producers very rarely get rich, but a lot of them make enough to get by. And besides, they're not in it for the money (the only people who can make a good living out of this arrangement is the club owners.. the system's not perfect..)
I think this model (with some adjustments) could scale to artisticly sound bands such as Radiohead. People who like these sort of bands will be willing to part with their cash voluntarily to keep the band going. It might not scale to trashy pop, at least it may not provide as much money as it does now. Can't really see that being a bad thing..
Off-topic, but favorite Stipe story: 1987 concert in which the man stood on stage preaching to the audience. "Don't eat meat." Of course, at the time, he happened to be wearing a leather jacket and sneakers.
From a purely economic point of view, you simply can't compete with "free"
Hey now. Just slow down a bit here. The RIAA has been saying this for nearly a decade now and all the music pirates who don't want to admit being pirates and the anti-DRM crowd has been shouting this down as a lie created by the RIAA. So which is it?
Consequently the experiment can only be a test if people accept the proposition and respond in fairness.
Again, hold on a minute. Fairness could have been part of the earlier long-standing music piracy "experiment". Instead of users pirating music they could have been a bit more honest, let's say fair, about it and decided to take up the good fight and boycott the industry instead of resorting to theft (that's what it is folks, regardless of what feel-good terminology you use for it). But instead we have a situation now of DRM, **AA lawsuits and people from Sam Goody looking for a new job. Playing the devil's advocate, had the consumer been "fair" in the first place we'd have a new model today that would be sponsored and embraced by the RIAA, that would likely see a drop in prices and that the consumer wouldn't need to skulk in the shadows like a common criminal to get their songs from a CD or a download to an iPod or on their cell phone. AFAIC, the user brought this onto themselves by not playing "fair" in the first place. Everything after that is simply backlash.
This wouldn't be the first situation where "pirates" recognize an honest attempt at finding a common middle ground and honor it by not cracking/releasing something.
But the situation is not real. It's still artificial. The bottom line is that even with a name-your-own-price music economy there are going to be tons of users who are going to chose zero. You admitted it yourself. This means that since the genie is out of the bottle there will be a segment of users who will feel justified using the free copy versus paying even a single cent. I'd like to think that you've been around here long enough to know how petty Slashdotters can be in their justification of anything they do. This should be no different. If this experiment has any positive end result for Radiohead it should be able to do it on it's own. Otherwise it's dishonest since piracy is here to stay.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
There was a live album as well.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
Radiohead from the Black Eyed Peas or Coldplay
You apologize! Apologize RIGHT NOW!
I'm pretty sure James Randi is offering his million dollars to anybody who can hear the difference between speaker cables in a totally blind test, and has been for a number of years now.
If you're such an expert maybe you could take his money from him.
No sig today...
Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
This is gonna be a great experiment, could revolutionize music sales and set the true market price for an album. Awesome.
The guilt transfer market is very income-elastic, rich people purchase far more of it then poor people: That is, they need to give away far more money before they feel good about themselves. Radio-head's system allows everyone, rich and poor, to give exactly the amount of money that makes them feel good. This is classic price discrimination, and it allows Radio-head to capture nearly all of the consumer surplus.
Good for them.
If everyone followed your logic, the band would stop producing music. Even if, for every individual, it is worth it for them to pay $1 for the download in order to keep the music coming, and even if that additional payment (in aggregate) would make the difference in whether or not the band continues producing music.
So, to recap, let's assume every rational person would be willing to pay $1 to the band to keep them producing more music, but instead makes the "rational" choice not to pay anything. The result would be that the band stops producing music, and all those "rational" people didn't get the outcome they would have preferred (and which they could have achieved, but failed to achieve due to your "logic"). To put this in more technical terms, global adoption of your strategy does not result in a globally optimal situation, even though it is optimal for each individual. (Or to use game theory jargon, your strategy may result in a Nash equilibrium, but it does not result in a Pareto optimum.)
You know how they say "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."? I think that is the case here -- you know enough game theory to decide what a rational player would do, but not enough to realize there is a better end result that can be achieved if you take a global view. The situation here is essentially the Prisoner's Dilemma: Some of us hope to achieve the Pareto optimum, which would be better for all involved than what would result if everyone adopted your strategy. So do not discourage others from supporting the band. Do not delude yourself into thinking that the only thing that makes sense is not to support the band -- that sort of thinking often leads to worse results than an approach which is a little less "rational".
I read your post as a bit condescending and that's why I replied with that fact about the #1 album. Everyone in the US knows who radiohead is, well beyond "creep." They might have been "the creep band" in 1996, and even though the Bends hit bigger initially in the UK, they have since won US Grammys awards, and otherwise received as much press and publicity as any other band could possible receive. Of course they are bigger in their home country, but they are about as far away from perceived as a one-hit-band as can be.
You're oversimplifying this to a zero-sum game where the only possible reward is the ultimate long-term survival of the band, but you're ignoring the other possible rewards that could be involved. For many, the gratification and self-satisfaction in offering support for a work of art they enjoy is its own reward.
Great article in Newsday by Glenn Gamboa, Who needs record labels?"
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I bought and downloaded the new release from Radiohead just now. The album I must say is very good, but that could be entirely a matter of my own taste. I enjoy Radiohead, having listened to them from the old days of "The Bends" and on up until now..."Kid A" is probably my favorite. But, I usually listen to anything I buy, before I buy it. iTunes has the preview, and sometimes, I'll sift the net a bit to see if the CD or download is worthy of purchase in some way...sometimes it via the KCRW Top Tune of the day podcast...check that out if you'd like something very cool.:) So, I paid 11.08 US $ for the new release. I thought around $10 was a fair price, especially considering it all goes to the band, and perhaps a few admins of course... The RIAA? No where in site on this deal. I bought without preview, for 1., I love Radiohead, and 2., I want the RIAA, and anyone else involved with DRM stuff to get the message. I would love to see the $220,000 court case verdict be eclipsed by what Radiohead is doing, as it's a high profile band, and I'd love to send a message that we don't want what the RIAA is selling us. So lets buy this one, and make a stink by doing so. If I had more money, I'd pay $100, just to vote in $, which is what the RIAA understands, that they are losing because they are too concerned with $, and have completely lost touch with what we want to buy. If I paid that $100, I'd consider it a vote, to send a message, paying for a freedom we all want, and sending further, a message that we want the artists to get paid fairly, and that we want real artists, not Britney Spears. But, at least, I got in $10, and did it while having to spend some time learning about currency conversion, which was also kinda cool, in the process. Imagine what type of message it would send to the RIAA, as well as every other musician, if 1,000,000 people paid $10 to download the new Radiohead release. This is how change occurs, how a revolution that's underway, can be furthered. Bye bye, RIAA. We don't need you...nor do the artists. I won't steal what you have to offer. And, I won't be buying as much as I did when I was younger. I still do, but I don't as much as I'd like. I just don't like the feeling of distrust that the RIAA puts out when I'm buying something. They are prejudging our character, which is disrespectful. Sure, there are people who steal. There always will be. Jailing all of the music, which restricts the freedom of musicians and listeners, of course, is like building a prison, one without bars perhaps, but still feels much the same. And I'm not inclined to harm, but to give, where credit is due. Initially, as I made my purchase, I thought, maybe I'll give 'em $5 bucks. Nah. $10 sounded better. Conversion and a small fee of $.45 brought it to a bit more, which I'm more than happy to pay. Then I thought of all this other stuff.:) Now I'm waiting for the next NIN album. What other artist is going to join? If we send a message to them with Radiohead, perhaps we'll see more than small independent bands, that while very good at times, often don't have what we've been accustomed to for years. But then again, that clearly has been controlled by the RIAA distribution channels for decades, and now they are completely falling on their own face. The bands are leaving them behind now.