One more reason Radiohead rules.
Because you can download their new album off their official website and pay whatever you consider the album to be worth. Including -0-. Oh, and no music labels are involved. Yeeeeeehaw!
October 01, 2007 in Music | Comments (32)
That was an odd experience last night when I pre-ordered the download. I would like to get the album for free, but I couldn’t put “0″ in the box for some reason. I had to pay something. I felt the same way I feel when it’s time to tip the server: I don’t want to pay but I just have to. And I can’t be a total cheapskate either. It’s not nice to not tip at least somewhat well. So I paid 4 Pounds. Which is 4 pounds more than I would have paid if they weren’t offering it for whatever I wanted to pay.
Comment by Tom — October 1, 2007 @ 11:38 am
ooh, how cool. i’m heading there now. and laughing at what tom wrote.
Comment by aubrey — October 1, 2007 @ 11:59 am
But you know you want the £40 mega-box.
Comment by The Brit — October 1, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
So, I guess this means that the sold enough copies of OK Computer, The Bends and Pablo Honey that they’re not that concerned about their livelihood anymore. I guess it’s a nice gesture, but only an established act like Radiohead can pull this off.
BTW, as I understand it, what they are doing is essentially “leaking” the album themselves. The CD will also be sold in stores starting sometime in early 2008.
Comment by BTD Greg — October 1, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
Bands don’t make much money off of CDs anyway. They make it touring.
Comment by Susan M — October 1, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
Bands make about $1.50 US on each album sold through a label. So if Radiohead averages even 1 pound per album sold through their website, they’re doing better than they would if they sold through a label. People like Tom (and me; I also paid 4 pounds, which seems like a magic number of sorts) are going well beyond the break-even point for the band. Probably Radiohead will make more this way than through an actual label, and will cause vast trouble for the recording industry in general. Very subversive.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — October 1, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
The question is whether this album will be any good.
Comment by Supergenius — October 1, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
Barenaked Ladies sold their last album independently on their website, forgoing a major label. They sold less albums but made more money per cd.
I think it’ll become more and more common.
Anyone remember George Michael releasing his album for free on his website years ago?
I also read/heard somewhere that Prince gave away copies of his cd at live shows. The money’s all in ticket sales/merch.
Comment by Susan M — October 1, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
Supergenius, you can pretty much answer that for yourself. Radiohead has been playing these songs live for more than a year, and you can find recordings of most of them on YouTube.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — October 1, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
BTD Greg,
You could be right, but isn’t the only real advantage of a label nowadays the promotion? The playing field for distribution has essentially been levelled. I don’t really know much about these things but I can’t see any other advantage than that.
Comment by Rusty — October 1, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
Rusty, you’re right other than that the costs to the band of distributing independently are much, much lower than the costs of distributing through a label. Furthermore, Radiohead is getting all kinds of free publicity (see this post!) as a result of doing this at a time when few other bands have done.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — October 1, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
The Charlatans UK are giving their next album away free through the web.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — October 1, 2007 @ 3:53 pm
RT, the Charlatans may be wise to do so, as it’s unlikely they’d sell much. It’s been a long dry season for them.
Comment by Supergenius — October 1, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
Yeah. They’re cool, though.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — October 1, 2007 @ 4:02 pm
Rusty, I think you are right. There are ways around record-label promotion, of course (MySpace, YouTube, and blogs, to name three), but the old-style system still has a stranglehold on radio play, as near as I can tell. (Then again, I’m not sure anyone but the kids is listening to music radio anymore these days.) It’s hard for a band that’s not established yet to get the word out if they don’t have a label. Then again, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah seems to be doing alright, and that band doesn’t have a record label.
Comment by BTD Greg — October 1, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
Who’s gonna pay me for all the times I’ve had to suffer through Radiohead songs?
Comment by Geoff J — October 1, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
I do think this Web download thing is a cool idea though. And I agree that the advantage of being with a record label remains the marketing connections and budget and other resources. It is really difficult for indie bands to get above radar when there are millions of other bands out there trying to do the same thing.
Comment by Geoff J — October 1, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
I paid 1 £. I don’t really feel bad though, considering I have no idea what a £ is.
Comment by Eric Russell — October 1, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
that would be about $2 Eric
Comment by Rebecca — October 2, 2007 @ 2:03 am
Hearing about bands making their albums downloadable and getting rid of the middleman recording executives – that warms my heart.
Comment by danithew — October 2, 2007 @ 5:11 am
I purchased Kid A in 2000.
Radiohead owes me a free album.
Comment by Justin — October 2, 2007 @ 8:58 am
Justin,
Optimistic? National Anthem?
Blasphemer.
Comment by The Brit — October 2, 2007 @ 10:08 am
My understanding is that the minimum donation is $1. But the servers are too overloaded for me to check.
BTW – I think Smashing Pumpkins did this around 1999 or 2000 in fury at In Sync and Brittany Spears getting all the airplay.
Comment by Clark — October 2, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
I don’t think we should be particularly thrilled (or certain) about the death of the record label. Without labels (and their up-front money) most of the bands you love would still be playing in a garage somewhere, and you would never have heard of them.
Comment by MCQ — October 2, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
I dunno MCQ. The labels try to foist total crap on us all the time. Without them we can choose what we like and good bands can become popular virally. For every good band that rose to the top in the old system I suspect there are 20 equally as good bands that eventually folded because they didn’t have a friend in a high place.
Comment by Geoff J — October 2, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
Choose from what? Without the labels (in times past at least) you would have never heard about a lot of bands, so you would have been choosing between the three bands you did know about. The internet makes it easier now, but a marketing budget still helps a lot to get the word out.
Label money also helps with record production. Most bands would never be able to get a good producer (or make a video) without label money.
Comment by MCQ — October 2, 2007 @ 11:53 pm
Friends in high places didn’t make or break every band. And without labels you have no better guarantee that those same twenty bands are going to be able to rise above the backgound noise and be heard.
Comment by MCQ — October 2, 2007 @ 11:57 pm
In terms of new records and bands, I doubt the death of major labels would have ANY impact on my record collection.
Comment by Brian V — October 3, 2007 @ 4:11 am
Funny thing is, Brian, minor labels usually offer bands much worse deals than major labels…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — October 3, 2007 @ 6:11 am
Which brings us back to bands making all their money through touring.
Comment by Susan M — October 3, 2007 @ 8:11 am
I think one big difference is that the technology has changed significantly the past 10 years or so. Even garage bands have access to reasonable software that really helps with production. Things like Logic or, at the low end, even programs like Garage Band. Of course you still need good equipment and being in a band doesn’t make one a good producer. But I think it certainly has changed how the game is played.
I also think that the mess that is commercial radio right now has changed the game. For us, the listeners, it’s made it more of a pain. It used to be you’d listen on the radio for good music. The music industry and broadcast industry made some horrible decisions in the 90′s though. They’ve alienated a lot of their audience. Which means that a lot, lot more people have to learn about music in other ways — typically friends or the internet.
This really makes word of mouth more important and also decreases the importance of what the label provides.
Don’t get me wrong. A good producer and advertising still counts a ton. But no where near what it did in say the 80′s.
Comment by Clark — October 3, 2007 @ 10:01 am
Sounds good. It’ll take some time getting into, as usual, but it already sounds better than Yorke’s independent effort, which wasn’t bad.
Comment by Eric Russell — October 10, 2007 @ 9:41 pm