My favorite depressing band, Radiohead, has released their newest album, titled In Rainbows. The CDs come out in December, but you can download it from their website now.
What’s different about this album is that you get to choose your own price. Radiohead does not currently have a contract with a record label, so they have some freedom to experiment with models such as this. Word is, most people are paying what they’d normally pay for an album in a store. I’m paying £9.00.
The website isn’t exactly a paragon of e-commerce, but it’ll do, bugs aside. It’s pretty slow right now, probably because a million people are downloading the album at once.
No review; I’m still downloading, and I’m terrible at writing about music. Try it for yourself if you have at least $3 and a credit/debit card (but really, you should pay more than that).
Short review from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
BoingBoing: Radiohead’s new downloadable album: DRM-Free! and Radiohead lets fans pick price for new album
When I say CDs, I mean the box set. I just found out it contains two CDs (one of extras from the recording sessions), plus two vinyl (yes, vinyl) LPs, and a hardcover book. Dang. No wonder it’s $80.
The economics of this are very interesting, depending on how you look at it. Typically, bands get at most 10%-20% royalties on their album sales, after paying back any advance they got from the record company. So, assuming an iTunes price of $10 for the album, a band will make $1-$2, if they’ve already payed off their expenses. That being the case, if you pay even $4 for this album, you’re giving Radiohead 100%-300% more than they would typically get from an album sale, which is why this actually works despite the fact that there are people downloading it without paying anything. If you buy the album for $10, then you’ve basically made up for 4-8 people who downloaded it for free.
I’m really interested in seeing how this works out in the long run. Musically, Radiohead frequently gets credit for “pioneering” certain sounds that were well-established in undgerground music years before they did it. This is something of a similar situation. Quote Unquote Records (to name a favorite of mine) has been doing DRM-free, donations-accepted free downloads since 2002. However, this is the first time that I’m aware of a big corporate rock band leaving the record labels and trying this for themselves, so I hope that it demonstrates it to be a viable business model for others.
tsk, tsk - Thom Yorke wouldn’t approve of you calling Radiohead “depressing.” Check out the 10/12 episode of Fresh Air (free podcast on iTunes) - there’s a repeat of an interview with him.
Well, some of it is depressing, but not all of it. Overall, I’d say Keane is more depressing. But “in a cage on antibiotics” is a pretty depressing line. Happily, it’s not typical, though.