

Radiohead New Album Sets Aside 'Pay What You Want' Model - whatrocks
http://thekingoflimbs.com/

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leviathant
The Radiohead "pay what you want" model was a self-admitted publicity stunt.
Fans paid whatever they decided to pay and received untagged, 160kbps MP3s. To
quote Jonny Greenwood, "I don't know, we talked about it and we just wanted to
make it a bit better than iTunes, which it is, so that's kind of good enough,
really. It's never going to be CD quality, because that's what CD does."

And so many went on to buy the CD version, and some bought the deluxe edition,
with a second disc of exclusive tracks -- which were only exclusive until they
were later released as B-sides.

You can look at it as either a way for the band to accept tips from their
fans, or more cynically, you can look at it as double or triple-dipping.
Regardless, Radiohead weren't looking to pioneer some new business model when
they did the pay-what-you-want In Rainbows download. They didn't share any
information about their experiment with other artists.

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whatrocks
According to the below Times article (Dec 2007 - a month later), 62% paid zero
and 12% accounted for more than 52% of revenue. Average price paid was $6
globally. US average price was $8.05; outside the US was $4.64.

[http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/th...](http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2817679.ece)

Article also quotes Fred Wilson: "This shows pretty conclusively that the
majority of music consumers feel that digital recorded music should be free
and is not worth paying for."

As for me, I paid zero. And then bought the vinyl a few months later.

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asynchronous13
The data from Radiohead's experiment is pretty interesting. There is one thing
that they did poorly though. Consider the person who downloads the album for
$0.00 because they want to hear the music before deciding how much they are
willing to pay for it. Radiohead's website did not allow that person to go
back and give money after the initial download. The only way to pay any money
in that case, was to download the album a 2nd time using a 2nd email address
(couldn't download twice with the same email) and include a $$ value for the
2nd download.

Credit me with 2 downloads, one for $0.00 and one for $5.00. If a lot of
people did that, it would inflate the total number of downloads and reduce the
average paid. I wonder how many people did something similar?

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slouch
this new website has a problem, too.

    
    
        I'm afraid you card payment was not sucessful.
        You may wish to try again or contact us with the details below.
        OrderNumber TKOL1-345345345345345345353
        Error details: 7: Transaction declined..
    

i tried twice, then got an email saying

    
    
         If you have placed more than one order in error, please be assured your email has now  been logged and the refund will be made over the next few days.

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ElliotH
However, they have kept the self-created-leak model. They have, quite
successfully, prevented this album from being known about until they chose to
tell people, and allowed the album to launch under their own terms.

The way I see it the pricing is the least important point here.

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ippisl
Can you please explain what differnece this makes , in a digital world , where
once a digital copy is sold it can be almost instantly availble around the
world for free ?

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ElliotH
Of course.

If you create something you want it to be available to people who pay for your
work. Paying customers and people who pirate leaked albums are separate groups
(though there is significant overlap). I should imagine to most people they'd
rather that their paying customers got access first, and arranging your own
surprise release enforces this, as well as creating a feel of excitement
around a release.

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Supermighty
Radiohead is experimenting with the best model. Good for them. They've got the
cash to burn to pivot and try something new. They may not be sharing their
data with other bands (nee competition), but that's OK because they'll push
everyone else in a similar direction if it looks that they are onto something.

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Synaesthesia
They made at least £4.8 million which is not bad for the "pay what you want"
model. Of course you have to be a famous band to even try this.

Average selling price was £4, and only 30% of people opted to pay. They get to
keep 100% of their royalties, whereas most band get a minuscule fraction of
the album price in royalties.

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Tycho
Business models are re-usable, publicity stunts aren't. Guess which one In
Rainbows was.

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zokier
Making part of your art piece intentionally slowly degrading seems like a
strange choice. I guess that part of our culture won't last for generations to
come.

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guscost
The people who didn't pay for In Rainbows are just going to pirate it anyway,
but they save on bandwidth, I suppose.

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fefzero
I'm sure that's true for a lot of people, but I think there were probably a
lot of people who thought of it as "try before you buy". This mentality
certainly applies to some percentage of those who would have pirated it, but I
think there are plenty of people who saw this as a free sample.

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dmvaldman
$9 is (about 30 cents) cheaper than ¢7 and £6 in case people in europe are
trying to save some pennies.

~~~
kilian
That's the cent sign. It's close, but not quite, the euro sign: € (on my
keyboard: right alt + 5)

