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Name-Your-Cost Radiohead Album Pirated More Than Purchased
phantomfive writes "Forbes is reporting that despite Radiohead giving their latest album away 'for free', more copies of the album were pirated than downloaded from their site. Commentators offered up the opinion that this was probably more out of habit than malice. People download from regular BitTorrent sources, and may not have fully understood the band's very new approach to the subject. Regardless, Readiohead's efforts are having some measurable effect, as noted by the chairman of EMI: 'The industry, rather than embracing digitalization and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, has stuck its head in the sand. Radiohead's actions are a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy.'"
Terms of the contract allow the user to specify no payment value and still download. Piracy is theft. Offering an item at optional cost does not allow for it to be stolen.
technical writing / development
I bought the disc box for ~$80 USD. Not because I thought it was a great album but because I wanted to support this model. The album is ok from what I've heard on MPR but it's growing on me.
I was curious so I asked around at work, it sounds like people are pay around four or five pounds ($8-$10). And I'm glad that I haven't had to guilt trip anyone into paying for it. Although, everyone I work with does receive a decent paycheck. I hope that by buying the discbox and encouraging people to buy it, it offsets the poorer people and the college kids. Having been in both those places, I sympathize heavily with them.
But, I hope that with writing, music & software people will realize how easy it is to disseminate the product and more will open up to the model of charging very little to touch millions instead of charging millions to reach very little.
I hope the shipping of the discbox goes better for Radiohead than it did for Prince. I can't wait to get my hands on that vinyl. I don't care what you say, it feels good to 'own' something even though the rights and definitions of that seem to deteriorate daily.
My work here is dung.
Actually, this demonstrates some problems with the approach: for instance, it adds yet another place one needs to look for content. Whether good or not, the Pirate Bay successfully consolidates where one looks for media.
No need to look all over the place. I haven't tried to purchase the release, but I wonder what sort of server they are running. Could it handle the traffic? Bittorrent might be the logical approach.
Maybe they should have released directly to bittorrent with a 5 second "share-sic" ad before each song that said to buy it at "name your cost" prices on the website to remove the ad (naturally, anyone would figure out how to get rid of the ad, I just think that if they established themselves as the primary tracker for their music, others wouldn't bother, so at least they'd get their message out).
Of course, they could have given a free license to the whole thing, and said "screw copyrights!"
Also, long term profits/concert tickets/publicity/etc. will have to be calculated before evaluating their experiment from a capitalist/profit perspective.
... about piracy of albums that weren't released with a user-pricing model? I want to know how many times other albums are downloaded comapared to purchased.
I know that Trent Reznor has publicly stated that he knows his latest album, Nine Inch Nails' 'Year Zero' was pirated a lot, and that he was happy people were listening to it, but unhappy about the albums pricing schemes and that he himself (and the musicians, audio engineers, etc. who made the album) didn't get much money from the album.
I'll bet Radiohead get more money from this than any of their other albums, despite the fact that the total amount of money made may be lower...
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. . . . . . . .
Why didn't they just put a torrent tracker on the official site? The bandwidth overload problem is _exactly_ what BT was designed to solve.
I wanted to encourage them, and to send a message to other musicians that offerring music for direct download will definitely benefit them.
I compose for and play the piano, and offer my recordings for free download from my website - see my sig. I get a couple thousand downloads a month. My aim in offerring my music for free is to build up a fan base, so that in a few years, when I start playing professionally, there will be lots of people who know my music and will be tickets to my concerts.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I paid $2. Since the stats seem indicate for a CD sale the actual artist only gets about 72 cents, I figured doubling their money was fair, especially as I'm not really a fan of the band and wanted to support the business model more than anything else.
As for people pirating... Good grief. I'd be willing to bet I have less money than 90% of the people who pirated it rather than pay a buck or two. Shame on all of them.
As a Nine Inch Nails fan, though, I am far more interested in what Trent Reznor will do now he's label free. (I admit to being slightly annoyed Radiohead beat him to the punch.)
I just want to know who the dumbass is who seeded the torrent of the album.
It should have been tracks that said "Go to radioheads website to get this for free and show the RIAA you hate them, then download it again from every computer you have access to"
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Anytime you have something that people want, and you do not give them a legitimate market to get it, a black market will develop.
While your opening sentence is correct, and something I agree with, the reason you presented is IMHO not quite it.
IMHO (and little else), the reason folks download music for free isn't due to any 'black market'.
No, people think little of downloading music because they get music for free anyway in other formats. They get it for free by taping it straight off the radio, and have done so for decades. They get it for free off of the zillion "Music Choice" (or similar) television channels that come with even the most basic of cable packages, siphoning off the tunes as they pass through the aux inputs in their stereo kits. They get it for free by copying it off of a friend's tape, then CD. The early DVD's included (and still include) music sound tracks. I can pick from millions of streaming radio sites online and listen to my heart's content... for free.
In short, you can get music for free damned near everywhere and record it onto tape or CD, so most folks think: "what's so bad about getting it for free off the computer?"
Most people have no idea that they pay the RIAA a vig on each blank cassette or CD they bought, so there's no logical connection there. You pay money to get a good archival-grade pristine copy of a song on tape or CD... or you pay to see the band live. You certainly don't pay to merely listen to the thing, according to most people.
When Napster showed up, it was, to the majority of humanity, just another route to listen to music, to grab tunes that they simply could not find anymore, and to get up a ready collection to burn to CD - so you didn't have to listen to those damned commercials and the brainless "Morning Zoo!" DJ blather on your way to work in the morning.
While the RIAA thinks (and legally so) that music is a commodity that can be charged for, down to a per-listen basis, the rest of humanity didn't know that, and upon discovery, doesn't agree with the concept. While iTunes has done a lot to make inroads, the DRM is still a bit of an obstacle (more an inconvenience than obstacle, really), etc.
Thing is, now that people have gotten a taste of the free goods, you think that they want to go back to a world of over-priced CD's, shit bands promoted by fiat, DRM-locked music files, "American Idol" rejects, 60/70's-era Wrinkle Rockers wanting to squeeze every last dime out of the public before they die, etc. etc etc.? Hell no! They'd rather go out there, pick what they really want, and get it in a format they can basically do whatever they want to with.
Some of us (myself included) decided that independent DRM-free music was worth searching for (mostly to stay out of court and still get good tunes). It was an eye-opening, mind-blowing world out there. At least in one opinion, the RIAA can kiss my ass if they think I'll ever even intentionally listen to any of their affiliates' music again. Forget purchasing - I simply do not want their constant barrage of new and mainstream-beige shit polluting my ears, my music collection, or my hard drive.
It'll take some time before the public at large realizes that yes there are legal and unlocked (and fairly priced!) music out there. I think that in the long run, they will.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Please cite the exact section of the Audio Home Recording Act that states this.
the site seems to be a bit slow right now, the main page just seems to go to a flash intro that never ends (though this may have to do with using the flash plugin via a wrapper in amd64 iceweasel). I managed to find a direct link to the store, entered a price of 0.0 (I'm not paying for stuff from a band i've never heared of) and got put in rather a long "we value your custom" queue.
after that I got prompted to enter an email address and password, I then got a "your details are not valid message and thrown back in the queue". Realised i'd gone for the wrong section and I had to click on to another page to create a new account. Lots of personal information requested. then a confirmation page and a capatcha. Finally an "order confirmation" page with the download link.
The download itself was ok, maxed out my (admittedly only 2 megabit) internet connection.
all in all the torrent would probablly have been more conviniant.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Under the Audio Home Recording Act, a levy (tax) is paid for every "digital audio recording device", and "digital audio recording media". This tax was lobbied for by the RIAA and the like, and the funds are paid into the Musical Works Fund and the Sound Recordings Fund, which are partially distributed by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, as well as the Aliance of Artists and Recording Companies.
Few people were affected by this after the first time someone burned an Audio CD with a data CD-R as the medium and discovered it worked.
I worked at best buy on and off 1999-2001, during the rise of the consumer CD Burner. We, and I'd imagine all the other box retail electronics stores, sold 2 types of CD-R's - CD-R Data, and CD-R Music. The CD-R Data came usually in 50 packs, the Music ones in roughly 30 packs. Sometimes the Music ones were in the same packaging as the Data ones, with a spacer on the spindle. Anyway, a 30 pack of music CD-R's was slightly more expensive (per 30) than a spindle of 50 CD-R Data discs (per 50), which made them WAY more per unit (40% ish).
But, of course, people would ask "What's the difference?" or "I'm trying to burn CD's for my car", or "Will the data CD's not work in my discman?" or other questions. And the truthful answer was that the data and music CD's were identical in manufacture and function - neither was "more compatible" or "better" for any particular use. The music ones cost more because fuck you, that's why. You're a pirate, and you're stealing money from the record labels.
That went over like a ton of bricks. You can't find Music CD-R's anymore, and you haven't been able to for a while. This is a battle that the "information wants to be free" crowd has won, and it doesn't get much press time anymore.
~Wx
sig?
And for the record, the MP3s sound surprisingly good, despite the bitrate. I have pretty sensitive ears to the high-frequency artifacts introduced by MP3 compression, and they aren't at all present on "In Rainbows", and I've been listening to it with my Shure canalphones, which would probably highlight any major defects in the sound.
Of course, without a properly mastered CD to compare to, I can't judge if there was any major quality degradation during the encoding process, but there's certainly no audible artifacting or anything like that. Heck, it's entirely possible they adjusted the raw mix before encoding in order to compensate for the compression step.