Hello! Community Page
- bobcaswell.com Jump to website »
-
Subscribe -
Community
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
-
Recent Comments
- Thanks for helping provide better perspective. Sometimes, in all the noise, we forget that protesters are usually just quiet neighbors. It takes an especially awful situation to get the noise level...
- Thanks for the comment. The more I read up on the situation, the more I understand why you (and others) are very upset about all this.
- "nice job, with your piece on the Bellevue demostration on Iran and awareness is all we can bring to the problem in Iran. Thanks Bob for his humane and objective view. Most of us have never...
- Thank you for the post. It's logical and repectful. I was there, mad as hell ( guy in red shirt...)
- Thanks for the thoughts, Bighappy, hopefully Bing will get to the point where you'll want to use it for tech info or classic cars. When you say that 93% of your searches have "absolutely...
Bob Caswell
Media consumer, tech enthusiast, and blogger
Radiohead’s Social Experiment: Choose Your Own Price for Our Music
Started by Bob Caswell · 10 months ago
1 year ago
This is a very interesting experiment, indeed, and the pricing curve ought to be fascinating.
What other artists should take away from this is less the "let the audience set the price" model than the "hey, you don't need a record label to make money" one. While an established artist like Radiohead no doubt has much better distribution than Joe and His Garage Band-its, the ability to sell digital content (which carries extremely low overhead compared to CD sales) means he can find success that isn't defined in the ways it has been in the past. Getting a record deal needn't any longer be the holy grail (especially since so many artists get pretty well shafted by such deals anyway).
I don't think that this move is terribly significant, either, but it is another visible name setting an example by trying something different (a proof of concept, if you will), which is what it takes to turn the tide.
(One more thing - it is possible to get the download totally free.)
1 year ago
A major catch-22 with their otherwise clever idea is that it's difficult to pick a price for something before you know your opinion of it. A convoluted solution would be to give away DRM-ed versions of the songs only later to offer DRM-free versions for a made-up price.
Of course, I hate DRM and that suggestion is only given to provide context for others to think of better ideas!
I suppose we don't get to listen to entire albums before buying as it is right now, but the difference is that here picking the price is the point.
I have to admit that I'd be inclined to pick a higher price if it was after I had a listen (of course, that runs the risk of the price getting lower if the album sucks for me).