News Radiohead allows you to pick album price

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/10/03/radiohead_allows_you_to_pick_album_price/1

In a revolutionary method, Radiohead is releasing its next album on the internet for... well, you pick the price that you want to pay.

 

Well, I'd rather do it this way, direct support for the artist and all that. My personal ideal price for a digital download of a full album is about £3.
There are of course people out there that will just do it for 1p.. but ya know

::EDIT:: it's possible to put in 0.00 and have it work. Unless of course they just don't send codes to people who put less than 1p

 

its not EXACTLY any price you want as:

the cynic in me says that people who try and buy or 1p will be charge something to make the price "reasonable" to from the bands perspective.

 

Yeah, Nedsbeds put up a post about this a couple days ago or so. I'd love to see how the industry responds to this, and it may be a turning point in all this BS regarding record companies versus it's customers.

I keep thinking of a quote from Princess Leia, "The more you tighten your grip Tarken, the more star-systems will slip through your fingers."

 

I think i'd be inclined to do what i always do, download it listen then choose how much i want to pay. Currently this involves p2p or nicking it from my mate then waiting for it come down in price till it hits the level i think is fair for the quality of the album. This time it'll just be legal.

 

I really wish they'd just release what the format/bitrate is for these files beforehand.

 

Can someone post up the format / bitrate when they download this please? It makes a big difference - e.g. I will pay maybe £5 for FLAC, £4 for high quality MP3 (VBR using lame --alt-preset standard or better) or OGG Vorbis, £3 for adequate quality MP3, AAC etc. (192 kbps MP3 or equivalent), and zero for anything lower. Also, what is the transaction fee, if any?

 

this is also being discussed here as well .. I tossed a TIMES story link in there that I feel is also a good read on the subject. This is neat stuff.

 

Actually on second thoughts I may go with zero for the download (if no transaction fee), evaluate and decide whether the album is worth having, then pay a suitable amount to download or wait for the non special edition CD (if such a thing ever materialises) - much as I like Radiohead, I'm not paying £40 for an album.

 

If you read the press releases the CD will be around on its own nothing fancy at a normal buy in the shops CD price, just it wont be around for some time (Few months).

I for one love Radiohead and am getting the £40 deal because i feel that with the nice hard back book and an extra CD is more than worth it. Also I do believe that everyone should get it as cheep as possible even if to see what its like. Record company do need to take scope on the power of the consumer, specially when it comes to down-loadable purchases.

 

Even if for some small fee and the rest is variable, this is a really cool concept I hope other big bands embrace and cut out the middle men who are ruining music one download at a time. With the power of the internet today I really dont believe for a second bands need a label. Why not just record and sell the songs yourself digitally? Not easier done than said of course.

Granted some people like having hard copies.

Radiohead gets some major respect from me for sticking it to the man and letting their customer dictate the price.

 

This won't make music labels won't go away. There's not a chance that 95% of artists could get their music listened to or produced the way they want using only the internet as their source of promotion. A label's main job is to spot potential success and then market and promote them so people hear about them. That's what you're paying for when you spend £15 on an album. Radiohead have the luxury of already being international stars so they can easily ditch their label and offer music via the net.

The biggest problem of labels at the moment is that artists are locked into 3-5 album deals so they can't shop around for a better deal once they get more famous. This obviously harms competition and keeps album prices higher than they should be. Hopefully this will gradually change though if labels keep losing their big artists to the freedom of the net.

 

Trent Reznor had a discussion about how the industry rapes consumers, lemme find it...

Ok found it:

 

Gotta respect Mr. Reznor for maintaining that position. He's seen the best and worst of it.

 

heh.. count on Trent to tell it like he sees it

 

i love radiohead. Radiohead/tom yorke are my favorite band/s. I will definatly be puting in a solid hunk of money to support them...

 

Thanks GuitarBizarre for that read, it really was a good one.
Glad to see respected artists attempting to give record companies a slap round the face but as DeX says, this kind of thing is hard for the small artist, they need the record companies to market them really so that people can find out. However having said that, with the rise of things like Myspace, last.fm, pandora etc it's easier to find new music that's similar to what you listen to, all we need is some smaller artists to start using those methods of getting found out.

 

Well, I have a fairly extensive music collection, of which a large percentage is on "extended evaluation". I'm also not Radiohead's biggest fan but I sure as hell will be buying this download at a decent price (I'd say £7.50 is fair for a good album). Doesn't matter whether I like it or not - it's worth the price just to send the message to the record industry that their business model sucks. And if Radiohead makes a good profit out of ditching their label and going it alone, then maybe artists who I really like will do the same and I'll be able to afford to pay for all the music I regularly listen to.

Somebody just needs to use a bit of imagination when it comes to DRM. My ipod already syncs the music I've listened to with iTunes. Why not have a subscription service where you can download whatever you want without limit, and you pay a monthly fee (say about £15). The software tracks what you listen to during a month and divides up the subscription between the relevant artists / copyright holders. If you are depressed one month and mostly listen to The Cure, then they get the biggest chunk and so on. If you stop paying then the music disables itself. BMG, give me a job - I done got Ideas, y'all.

 

Greetings!

Finally someone thinks about the subject instead of just hoping in the band wagon: