Radiohead recently attempted to revolutionise the way music is sold by offering their latest album In Rainbows through the website, with the purchaser choosing how much they wanted to pay. The minimum cost of which would be 45p for the handling fee. Apparently of the 5000 responses they got to the survey of purchasers asking how much they paid a quarter admitted to being freeloaders and taking the album for the minimum price. The average price paid for the standard album was £3.88, not bad really considering this figure is 862% above what they could have got away with paying.
But will this spark a trend for music sales? will other artists follow suit? I remain unconvinced. For a start the model only works through the artists own website, where the perception is that the money is going direct to the people who made the music. It would never work for a retailer such as hmv as people would be much more inclined to pay the minimum if they thought that the “middle man” was taking a cut.
I do though see it as a good test of honesty and perceived value. I recently spoke to some people who refused to download free music from the internet as they felt that the artists had put in a lot of time and effort in producing it and so should be recorded through a real purchase. These are the sort of people who undoubtedly paid a lot higher than the 45p minimum. I also think that by giving people the option of choosing how much they pay you are tapping into their conscience and getting a real view of whether they are a “free-loader” or not.
Interesting to note that the album will get a full cd release as well and so radiohead were not pinning all hope on this model. Maybe it was just a publicity stunt, who knows.
How much would I pay? I am not sure. Certainly more than 45p, probably more like £5, that seems like a fair figure for a full album. It will be interesting to see whether the trend actually does catch on and this is the model which revolutionises the music industry.