Radiohead lets fans set price for new album
While companies like Amazon are rushing to offer users more control over their music and what devices they can play it on, it's interesting to see a successful band like Radiohead advocate more consumer input in the price of music. CD prices have skyrocketed in recent years, and we've come to think that $.89 is a low price for a single song download. But given their druthers, what would music fans really pay for a song they really want to listen to?
Radiohead's new album, titled In Rainbows will officially launch on October 10th. If you pay the $80 for a box set, you get the album on vinyl and CD. You'll be able to download the tracks for free. There's no word on what format the downloadable version will take, or if the songs will contain DRM.
[via Boing Boing and Silicon Alley Insider]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Josh Preston said 3:21PM on 10-01-2007
This move will play on the psyche of an entire generation of people that have used the web as their main channel of discovering new music. I just hope that when this is all said and done, Radiohead will release the figures of what the average person actually paid. These numbers will make every label in the world shit themselves. Well, maybe.
This move will raise questions about the seeming slap in the face to record stores. At first, I really thought that indie stores will be super pissed and burn Radiohead records in the streets. Well, not so fast. If you stop and think about it, this entire packaging scheme actually drives the value through the roof because Radiohead fans will absolutely go to stores to purchase this uber-cd release. I hope indie record stores take a deep breath before they start smashing Radiohead records in the aisles. With an actual product of value and uniqueness, Radiohead may actually have an incredibly positive impact on driving traffic to record stores. Everything just changed. In the not so distant future, just putting an album out on CD in a jewel case will no longer be enough. Could the box set be the future of physical products?
The last bit is the utter disregard of lead time in press. They are totally avoiding leaks by putting this out all at once. When I first started thinking about this, my immediate concern was that, with no press time, who the hell is going to write about it and review it? It was at this point that I logged into my RSS feed reader to see if anyone was writing about it. Every music blog in the world had a bit about it. I shit you not. It is a music press coup unlike anything the world has ever seen. Most notable and interesting of all, Billboard didn't have a post up about it when I first logged in. Only music blogs. Fans of music. Mainstream press, the folks the industry as a whole is aiming to please is now on the backside playing catch-up.
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Jon said 2:40PM on 10-04-2007
@ Josh
As far as I know, no shops will see copies, it will only be avail. through their site. - great post though
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Zelidar said 8:43AM on 10-11-2007
This is great! What would be even better is to be able to pay _after_ one has listened... You liked so much that you "vote" with your money to have more of it.
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