Radiohead - In Rainbows
Recently, Radiohead released their seventh studio album, IN RAINBOWS. It was available only as a digital download from their website. They plan to release a deluxe version of the album sometime later. More importantly, Radiohead is letting listeners pick what they want to pay for the album.
Interesting for sure. Path breaking... bold... experimental... I don't know. Maybe music fans and music-industry doomsday folk are missing a point.
Radiohead is a MEGA band. Its fan base is HUGE. They can afford to keep the middle man (the record company) out of the whole deal because they know where their side of the bread is buttered - and that's LIVE performances (touring). So, for a big band like Radiohead - getting as many idiots to hear the album is a sure-shot way of packing stadiums. Pearl Jam may follow. Eagles may follow.
But spare a thought for the new bands... will this help any of the new acts out there who have not had the marketing expertise offered to the likes of Radiohead over the past many years? Radiohead can afford to pull off a stunt like this because their fan base is in place - something they owe a lot to the their talent (undoubtedly) as well as the commitment of EMI - their erstwhile record label. Nobody markets music better than a record company. Even in the age of fucking YOUTUBE.
Variable pricing - or picking your price in today's world is stupid. The manufacturer decides the price - not the customer. Imagine walking into a grocery store - picking up a liter of milk and paying 5 Rs. or 25 cents (for my Singaporean friends). 'I choose my price - and I don't think milk deserves to be priced more than this. I will pay 12 bucks instead of 28 bucks for a dozen of eggs... because I think eggs should be priced that way'. What the fuck...!!
This action of Radiohead - to me - is sad for the business. After years of work put in by the label to promote them - get them seen, heard and bought - they walk out to do this? New bands won't even try this stunt. Worse, the new acts are going to get tied down to 360 degree deals (physical, non-physical, live, merchandise, artist management) with the record labels - and the every purpose of a breaking out act (by the likes of Radiohead and that petrol-head Geroge Michael ) will prove as a curse rather than a blessing.
Oh, by the way - their music is available at 160kbps... the band leader says that the goal was to provide better quality than that of iTunes (128 kbps). CD quality is at around 1000 kbps.
So, fans pay crap for crap.
Interesting for sure. Path breaking... bold... experimental... I don't know. Maybe music fans and music-industry doomsday folk are missing a point.
Radiohead is a MEGA band. Its fan base is HUGE. They can afford to keep the middle man (the record company) out of the whole deal because they know where their side of the bread is buttered - and that's LIVE performances (touring). So, for a big band like Radiohead - getting as many idiots to hear the album is a sure-shot way of packing stadiums. Pearl Jam may follow. Eagles may follow.
But spare a thought for the new bands... will this help any of the new acts out there who have not had the marketing expertise offered to the likes of Radiohead over the past many years? Radiohead can afford to pull off a stunt like this because their fan base is in place - something they owe a lot to the their talent (undoubtedly) as well as the commitment of EMI - their erstwhile record label. Nobody markets music better than a record company. Even in the age of fucking YOUTUBE.
Variable pricing - or picking your price in today's world is stupid. The manufacturer decides the price - not the customer. Imagine walking into a grocery store - picking up a liter of milk and paying 5 Rs. or 25 cents (for my Singaporean friends). 'I choose my price - and I don't think milk deserves to be priced more than this. I will pay 12 bucks instead of 28 bucks for a dozen of eggs... because I think eggs should be priced that way'. What the fuck...!!
This action of Radiohead - to me - is sad for the business. After years of work put in by the label to promote them - get them seen, heard and bought - they walk out to do this? New bands won't even try this stunt. Worse, the new acts are going to get tied down to 360 degree deals (physical, non-physical, live, merchandise, artist management) with the record labels - and the every purpose of a breaking out act (by the likes of Radiohead and that petrol-head Geroge Michael ) will prove as a curse rather than a blessing.
Oh, by the way - their music is available at 160kbps... the band leader says that the goal was to provide better quality than that of iTunes (128 kbps). CD quality is at around 1000 kbps.
So, fans pay crap for crap.
posted by Arun Nair at
1:38 PM
5 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
Variable pricing - or picking your price in today's world is stupid. The manufacturer decides the price - not the customer. Imagine walking into a grocery store - picking up a liter of milk and paying 5 Rs. or 25 cents (for my Singaporean friends). 'I choose my price - and I don't think milk deserves to be priced more than this. I will pay 12 bucks instead of 28 bucks for a dozen of eggs... because I think eggs should be priced that way'. What the fuck...!!
That isn't an accurate comparison at all.
An egg is a physical object that costs X units of currency to produce.
A Compact Disc is a physical object that costs X units of currency to produce. (Check the cost of a blank CD for reference.)
The costs associated with physical objects have a fixed minimum cost which you cannot afford to sell below.
Whereas "music"/"movie" is "content" and has a one time production cost and the copying cost is near-zero. So once you have recovered your initial investment into producing the content.. every penny you make after that is profit.
You price yourself out of the market you'll earn nothing.. you price yourself too low you lose potential earnings. Variable pricing is a nice compromise.
After years of work put in by the label to promote them - get them seen, heard and bought - they walk out to do this?
And you would never quit your job for a better paying one? Or join a competitor who could put your previous employer out of business?
New bands won't even try this stunt.
Sorry Radiohead didn't invent this there are tons of other artists that have been selling their content online for years! Check out Magnatune
And as far as 128kbps vs 160kbps vs CD quality ... you can buy the CD when it's released at the end of the year.
But considering the "third largest music store" in the US sells 128kbps tracks at near CD rates ... the consumer is getting screwed over more by Steve and the industry. In comparison what you refer to "crap for crap" is a fair deal.
BTW there is this other kind of digital "content" that has been around as long as computers... and there were huge billion dollar corporations that were built on it... and with the growth of the internet alternatives emerged for the products of these billion dollar corporations that were available for free.. initially they weren't feature rich.. but over time they have improved and in some cases even become much better than the offerings from the billion dollar corporations.
Today there aren't any billion dollar corporations left that don't rely on these alternative offerings or have similar offerings of their own.
IDC Projections of '07-'08
This didn't happen overnight but took over 20 years to make a serious dent in the marketplace/hit critical mass... and go from alternate to mainstream ... but the growth in the past 10 years has been phenomenal. And I have been fortunate to been able to ride this wave and seen various software go from an idea to buggy betas and maturing through subsequent releases.
I don't see any reason why this won't happen with the music industry, considering today you can create much better content than the average professional studio a few decades ago ago with a sub-$1000 computer and software like this http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/
BTW even the movie industry might have some competition coming up... have you seen Elephants Dream? As computing power becomes more affordable
(In 1997: US$30,000 per GigaFLOP/s(a cluster of computers); In 2007 with an off-the-shelf $400 PS3 it's $0.20 per GigaFLOP/s.) you'll see more than more people going this route.
If 10 years ago an school/college art project involved painting a large mural... 10 years from now it could involve developing an animated movie!
Dude, you got emotional again. Pro-variable pricing... and anti Music label. And I get you are wordsworthy. Your theory on variable pricing and why it is right is unreal. Though you are right when you say that 'You price yourself out of the market you'll earn nothing.. you price yourself too low you lose potential earnings', the answer to this is not variable pricing - but the right pricing - what people in business refer to as the sweet spot. Somehow nobody complains about 5$ lattes at Starbucks. Right pricing?
What I was referring to the effort put in by the record company was taken wrongly by you. The fact remains that Radiohead owes a lot of what they are today to the countless phone calls to radio stations, payola-like deals, PR exercises, promotional tours... all done by the label.
Next, MAGNATUNE has a useless selection of music. Even you, Kingsly, can put your stuff up there. When I say new artists, I mean serious musicians with potential. And the very fact that someone like me has not a heard of a single bizarre name on that site in the rock section shows what a music company could have done in promoting them. They could not even get a write up in Rolling Stone man...!! I checked it. Who do you think gets artists on the Tonight Show... and 60 Minutes, and The Daily Show??
Dude - don't compare Radiohead to these jokers. And if you read my post again - you will find out that I mentioned that this may be path-breaking - BUT I DON'T KNOW.
Because I am yet to hear of a top band today that has become famous or successful doing this... putting their stuff up on the net and asking 'fans' to pick a price. Radiohead, like most big rock bands make money on tour. To them it does not matter how much their music is actually sold for. This is the point you are missing. The Rolling Stones grossed 437 Million dollars for their Bigger Bang Tour. Their album sales (same name) must have netted them a tiny tiny fraction of that. In the post, I was simply questioning Radiohead's strategy as a viable one for new bands. The answer is no... because nobody knows of them as stars to pay dollars to watch them LIVE.
The 128 kbps statement is my personal opinion. Are you telling me that just because America is sucking up iTunes I can't have an opinion on quality...? Dude, I am a CD guy. I listen to my music on hi-fi. I listen to records also. I look for depth in sound. I don't listen to music on my ipod or through some fuck-wit table top speakers connected to my computer. Its a personal opinion on the quality of music consumption. And being someone who consumes the best - I despise the rest. Even if iTunes opened up in India - I would maybe buy 5 songs a year - that I wanted to listen 10 times each and delete from my playlist for good.
I'm not anti-music label, I still buy my music on CDs(and like you believe that the quality of music on iTMS is crap)
I'm pro-open source software, and yet I pay for games which are proprietary and come with no source code!
Just because you are pro-something doesn't make you against everything else.("You are either with us or against us." isn't realistic at all, unfortunately that's how all entrenched monopolies think.. RIAA/MPAA/BCCI! :-)
Next, MAGNATUNE has a useless selection of music. Even you, Kingsly, can put your stuff up there.
Possibly, but people wouldn't pay to listen me singing! :-) And nobody would have lost any money.
Unlike hearing an amazing song on the radio.. and then buying the whole album to realise the rest of the songs are crap.
I most definitely wouldn't write off the artists on magnatune or the various artists on myspace as not being "serious musicians with potential." without even hearing them.
Not many people know of this group from the 50s called "The Quarrymen" either.. and they never had any records out on a major label, but you'll have to agree that doesn't make them any less serious musicians.
And the very fact that someone like me has not a heard of a single bizarre name on that site in the rock section shows what a music company could have done in promoting them.
Maybe these artists have a different benchmark for success?
The artists on the big labels might need to gross millions of dollars to be a "success". But the small guys maybe happy if they can make a few thousand each month to pay their bills which will allow them to spend more time on creating newer/better music instead of having to work someplace that they hate just to pay the bills.
The question is would you listen to the music on magnatune? or would you not give them a try because they haven't been classified as "marketable" by a record label that you know?
And if you heard an artist/song that you liked, would you not tell your friends about it? Or would you listen to it if someone you knew asked you to?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, that's where the music industries biggest fears are. Potential customers listening to music that's not on their catalogue!
BTW there's variable pricing that you definitely apply on an almost everyday basis in the real world but it just isn't labeled that way, the guy that fills air in the tyres at a petrol bunk, or the waiter at a restaurant.
And there's plenty of variable pricing going on on sites like ebay.
None of them think they are losing money.
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