The Song Fight Bulletin Board

'Holy fucking shit' pretty much sums it up for me.

Today, Radiohead announced two ways that you can pre-order their new album. The first way is to purchase the 'disc box' which includes the new album on vinyl, two CDs, and a digital download, which will ship to you on December 3rd (I believe.) Okay - fine enough.

The second way to purchase the new album is that you can buy the digital download only, which you can procure on October 10th - fucking 9 days from now! Furthermore, YOU GET TO SET YOUR OWN PRICE for the download. Seriously, though. What a fucking brilliant business experiment to grab all of the people who would otherwise just steal it (which generally includes myself.) Not to mention that I get to legally have the new Radiohead album in 9 days.

Does this totally thrill anyone else?

http://www.inrainbows.com
(I have tried as hard as I can to determine whether or not this is some sort of hoax/scam but it really seems to be 100% legitimate.)

I'll probably buy it for the same amount I'd spend to get it at eMusic (if eMusic had Radiohead). Maybe a little more than that.

If it sucks as bad as Kid A did, I won't be purchasing *or* stealing it

Radiohead now replaces Nine Inch Nails as Popular Band That Understands The Internet The Best. They let you enter £0.00, which means their business model is to give the album away, letting you pay them what it you think it's worth to you. Also, they are not on a record label, so you know that the money is actually going to the band.

This is the way it should be done. I will be giving them more than 5 dollars... possibly significantly more.

I will be giving them less than five dollars because I don't have very much money to spend on music. Also, I haven't heard anything off the album, so I don't know if it will be good Radiohead or Radiohead that I only listen to once (Amnesiac).

But hell yes to this awesome way of getting the music out there.

I'm not going to get it.

senza valore wrote:Furthermore, YOU GET TO SET YOUR OWN PRICE for the download.

Hey, somebody else picked up the idea from internet label Magnatune (Brad Sucks and c.layne, among others, are on that label). It's a cool idea.
-bill

HeuristicsInc wrote:

senza valore wrote:Furthermore, YOU GET TO SET YOUR OWN PRICE for the download.

Hey, somebody else picked up the idea from internet label Magnatune (Brad Sucks and c.layne, among others, are on that label). It's a cool idea.
-bill

Yeah, Magnatune rocks! Also, Jane Siberry has been doing this for years on her own site, not that she's as big as Radiohead.

Didn't Metallica give away their music for free? Oh, no...they just encouraged people to steal it

This is fantastic news. I hope it works out.

I'm very curious to see how this plays out. I want it to work, but I have am plagued by doubt.

(Perhaps my doubt is fueled by the Pacific Northwest's ample examples of failed altruism -- Portland keeps releasing yellow bikes into the wild, and they all run away or end up in such a state of decrepitude/disrepair that they are unsafe to ride.)

I dunno. I guess I also find the totally random "pay what you will" setup distressingly arbitrary.

It might be useful to build a "pay what you will" site that incorporates a widget that would survey the potential buyer.

The widget could generate a "suggested price" based both on financial information supplied by the buyer (income / spending habits), and financial information from the seller (how much do we need to sell this thing for to break even / make a profit?)

The seller information could also be programmed to consider sales volume. (If we sell 10 of these a day, we have to charge 5 bucks pop -- but since today we sold 10,000, we can sell them for 50 cents.)

The resulting data would also be useful. (Do people pay the suggested price? How much more or less do they pay?)

It's an experiment I'd like to see. I know consumers are unlikely to supply personal info of the kind this project would require. I'm just brainstorming here. Carry on.

Related reading: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... te06e.html

Oh yeah! I remember hearing about those crazy kids on NPR some years back. (Or maybe it was a similar venture?) Thanks for that link!

Again, I like the idea... but I'd like to check back with them in 5 years to see how things are going.

It is also worth noting that Kirkland is a fairly well-heeled slice of the greater Seattle area.

My sense is that these semi-socialist ventures have the potential to work fairly well in small and well-to-do environments. I am interested in finding a way to make them work in larger contexts. ('cause I'm not a fan of pure capitalism!)

Only the Princes and Radioheads of the world can afford to do this right now. But I'm with Em, there's got to be a scalable model that lets unknowns set things up, pool promotion money and affordable legal/touring resources. A few years back Dave Stewart and Quincy Jones tried a new label with some of these attributes/concepts, and I spent some time working up business plans it. What's the label's name? Hell if I know because it never happened.

anti-m wrote:consumers

God, I really really hate that word. It conjures a vision of people blindly consuming anything and everything in their path whilst creating nothing of their own, like a nation of pacmen.

obscurity wrote:

anti-m wrote:consumers

God, I really really hate that word. It conjures a vision of people blindly consuming anything and everything in their path whilst creating nothing of their own, like a nation of pacmen.

Oh, you mean the U.S.! Yes. I live here.

a casual perusal of torrent sites I've known finds nothing of this album available yet. By eliminating the album getting into the manufacturing stream before being available online, they effectively eliminate the "leaked" copies that might rob them of sales. Pretty smart, if that's part of their idea....

I haven't figured out how much I think a digital version of an album is worth. I guess $5-10.... It's got to be significantly lower than actual physical version...but not insultingly so. I wonder what formats it will be available in? If it's only lossy compression, not worth as much. FLAC, more value to me, more $ I'd spend. Hmm....

Guess I'm in either way.... I'd love to buy the whole kit, but $80 is a bit much.... very cool experiment from a band in a perfect position to make out awesomely well no matter how it goes, really.

I believe it said it was mp3, but not the bitrate...
-bill

Hmmm... and this just in:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1191368 ... lenews_wsj

roymond wrote: Didn't Metallica give away their music for free? Oh, no...they just encouraged people to steal it

I really don't like Metallica's music, but I religiously download it all once a month on principle, then delete it.

I'm going to give them $19.95. I absolutely love the band and I can afford it. I'll consider the extra $15 a tip. I want them to make more money on this album than any previous.

I too don't care AS MUCH for Amnesiac as all the rest of their albums. I've been enjoying these songs for over a year, I can't wait to see what actually made it on the album and how they've treated the songs in the studio.

You know I've been to dozens of "sliding scale" shows in the bay area, it works well by all accounts.

As I understand it most bands get a 10 point deal, that's 10% of what the record company sells it to the retailer for which is about $5, so the band gets $.50 , for them to make as much as they would normally everyone needs to average $.50

Also, the box set with all the crap available right before Winter Solstice ,my sister and I have agreed to buy for each other in celebration of Isaac Newtons birthday.

I bought the boxed set.

I have never spent $80 on a single album before but GOD DAMNIT IT'S RADIOHEAD.

fluffy wrote:I bought the boxed set.

I have never spent $80 on a single album before but GOD DAMNIT IT'S RADIOHEAD.

Burn me a copy.