Radiohead's groundbreaking pay-what-you-want offer for the album In Rainbows ended on Monday. While it's generally regarded as one of the music industry's most daring promotions ever, not everyone (we're talking fellow musicians here) thought it was such a hot idea.
The British band shook the record business in October by allowing fans to download the digital version of In Rainbows for whatever price they chose. The group was praised for potentially laying the groundwork for a new business model that might one day save the record industry.
At least one rocker was unimpressed. Nicky Wire, a member of the Manic Street Preachers, whose hits include "Send Away The Tigers," told a news publication last week that Radiohead's offer "demeans music."
"Fair play to Radiohead for doing something different," Wire told the United Kingdom's Daily Star. "It's certainly great publicity, but I think it kind of demeans music. Music used to be a market; now it's all gone digital. It's worrying (that) cinema is doing well, video games are doing well, but music isn't. The free-download phenomenon is ruining the industry."
I know such statements are heresy to the "free" culture, but Wire may be right to question whether Radiohead's experiment was a success.
Radiohead has declined to reveal how much it earned from the promotion. ComScore, a traffic-tracking company, stirred controversy last month when it estimated that the proceeds were lackluster. About 62 percent of those who downloaded In Rainbows did so without paying a dime, ComScore reported.
The band called ComScore's figures, which were derived from a sample group, "wholly inaccurate."
But the obvious question now is, why would Radiohead kill the promotion and go back to a traditional sales model, if the cash were rolling in?*
After all, music industry executives say the economic life span of an album can last as long as two years. It starts when an act releases a record and is extended when the performer goes on a concert tour.
"For those of you who wish to buy In Rainbows in the usual way," said a message on Radiohead's site on Tuesday, "it will be available on CD/vinyl and download from traditional outlets from the 31st December 2007."
Several publications have reported that Radiohead is negotiating to make In Rainbows available on iTunes.
You can argue that most people still listen to CDs and that the band wants a chance to tap into that market. But if the pay-what-you-want promotion were a cash cow, why not keep it going at the same time that you sell CDs? If the digital market is totally separate than the one that buys digital music, there's no way to cannibalize.
If they are not separate, then hasn't Radiohead already doomed physical sales of the album?
And then there are the statements made this weekend by the group's manager, Chris Hufford, in an interview with the The New York Times indicating that the offering was a one-off.
"This was a solution to a series of issues," Hufford told the Times. "I doubt it would work the same way ever again."
He's not saying the promotion was a bust, but neither is he hollering, "Eureka, we've discovered the new paradigm!"
There's no doubt that Radiohead's gutsy move scored points with fans. The acts that follow Radiohead's experiment, such as rapper Saul Williams, will likely come away with valuable experiences.
Similar to Radiohead, Williams offered a free digital version of the album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardus. Unlike Radiohead, though, he offered a premium version at a higher bit rate that fans could obtain for a $5 donation.
At this point, it looks like Radiohead began a discussion. There's plenty still to be debated.
* XL Recordings will release the CD version of Radiohead's album In Rainbows on 31st December 2007.
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Matt
12/12/2007 06:29 PM
I'm not a huge Radiohead fan but i like their music and i downloaded the album and paid $15.00, my friend also downloaded the album and is a massive Radiohead fan, got all their albums but he told me he only paid $5.00 for it, i couldn't work it out, he loves the band so thought he would have paid doubled on what i paid but didn't, so i dunno if was being a tight **** about it or felt that $5.00 was what the band was worth to him. even more shocked by how more half of people who downloaded the album paid $0.00 for it. Is radiohead or any band only worth $0.00 now days.
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Dec540
12/12/2007 06:43 PM
I know that i'm not a fan of radio heads but like many other people in the same boat as me i downloaded it not paying a cent just for the fun of it and to see if i liked their music as i had not heard much of it before. Even if the 62percent figure is correct there is still nothing to compare it to.. 50 of the 62% of non paying downloaders might have been people who never would've planed to buy their album anyway. Radiohead is not losing money on the people who like me downloaded for free just to listen to it and heck they are pretty good so its no doubt people did the same as me and now like their music.
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Itch
13/12/2007 12:08 AM
I payed $0 for it solely for the fact that I will pick up a hard copy when it is released and I don't really feel like paying for it twice, but I do that with most of my music, download the leak and then eventually buy a hard copy once it get released in stores. So I think the majority people who didn't pay for it either have never heard the band before and wanted to sample, or are planning to do what I am going to, so I don't think you can read into the 62% too much.
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gen_x
13/12/2007 02:01 PM
Isn't the problem less to do with what people are willing to pay for it and more to do with the medium and mechanism through which it is being paid? It isn't as easy to pay over the internet (or as secure) as it is to just reach into your pocket and pull out money, and people still can't get their heads around the difference between owning a piece of round plastic (ie a CD) and owning a binary stream which sits on their computer and can quite easily be lost. With Sony also "suggesting" that you need to seperately buy for each medium you use, it just makes the whole process of actually paying money for digital content still a huge grey area. So the problem is not people being stingy, the problem is technology and the world philosophy not being advanced enough to make this medium and the methodolgy the "path of least resistance" for the general masses. Maybe when anything we download can be easier to store and keep, the DMR allows us to do what we want with it, and paying for it is a worry-free breeze this will be the way to go.
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