As many of you know (and I'm sure all Radiohead fans already know this), Radiohead is allowing the fans to decide the price they are willing to pay for digitally downloading their music. This is either a brilliant marketing strategy or Radiohead causing a lot of chaos within the music industry. I think it is more of the latter than anything else. Fans can go to Radiohead's website and select to download their music. The price field is left blank and says "It's up to you" and "No, really. Its up to you".
This raises the question of who decides what should be a fair price for music? Should it be the record industries who handle most of the pricing now and are the most aware of the incurring costs? Should it be the actual fans who purchase the music? How about the artists themselves? It is their masterpiece so whose right is it to say they shouldn't be the pricers of it. Painters sell their own work at galleries under their pricing structure most of the time. How are artists in the field of music different? This raises another question too. Once a band strikes it big, do they actually need a label in order to make money? Bands like U2 can create a CD without a label and it'll go platinum, guaranteed.
I personally think this whole thing will die down after a month or so. It'll create a buzz when it is released and people will have an interest in monitoring how successful it does, but the hype will end and nobody will really care anymore. In answering the question of "Who should price music?", the industry will continue to be the deciders of how music is priced. However in an age where obtaining free music is as easy as clicking a button, the industry is going to have to offer some incentives besides an album filled with music in order for people to actually go out and buy an album. Bonus features such as interviews with the band or concert footage is a start and it is being done a lot, but there will need to be more (especially at 20 bucks a pop).
How will the album do? There will be a hard copy released in stores. It will obviously not sell as much as you would expect from Radiohead because of the digital downloading, but will still sell a decent amount. A lot of people will pay $.01 for the downloadable version because they have the power to do it and others will pay a decent amount for it (over $20) because of the message Radiohead is sending and how they are going about doing it. Either way, I'm just hoping the music is as good as their past five albums were.
2 comments:
I like the gesture, but Radiohead isn't the first band/artist I've heard of doing something like this. I can't exactly remember who, but I remember reading an artist/band or two who've asked the fans what the price of their album should be, while I believe one band released all their music to download for free and as a result actually got more album sales because of it. In the end I agree with you that the hype will die down.
I know Prince released an album of his for free, but the way Radiohead is going about releasing theirs is unique. They aren't giving it away for free (I don't think you can pay $0 for it and even if you can there is a credit card processing fee). Also, I think the artist who asked the fans what the price of their album should be ended up releasing it at a set price (they just got the opinions of their fan base). I've personally never heard of any artist let fans choose the price they feel is right to pay for an album.
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