

Analyst estimates Radiohead made $2.7 million (and they keep nearly all of it) - charzom
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/radiohead-fans-cheapskates.html

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cstejerean
Ah, if only some band can do this from beginning without the help of any major
record label in the process. As many others have said Radiohead's success
needs to be attributed in part to major record labels for helping them become
famous first.

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Goladus
So the question is:

How do bands build a fanbase? How much is a band willing to pay for marketing?
Maybe labels will be able to profit from bands without stealing the copyrights
as they have traditionally done. If not, will anyone else step up?

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jamiequint
I'd be interested to see how many people didn't pay then went back and paid
later after they judged the value of the content, probably some skew in the
stats there.

~~~
BrandonM
It's too bad that feature wasn't really built into the interface. My friend
ordered it, and it wanted you to enter a price as soon as you downloaded it.
That meant you would have to go through the download process again if you
wanted to pay $0 at first and then more later, which seemed kind of backwards.
In my opinion, it would have made more sense to have the songs as streaming
mp3s on the site, and then allow the option to buy the album after listening
to the tracks.

It's also too bad that they are effectively punishing those people who bought
into this business model. The tracks ended up being somewhere between 128 and
192 Kbps mp3s (I don't remember exactly what, though, something like 154
maybe?), and they will now be selling the CD through the usual outlets for the
normal price, with additional songs that weren't available in the pay-what-
you-want offering. This means that fans who went out and bought the low-
quality, less-songs album will have to pay yet more money to get all of the
album's songs and CD-quality music.

All of this would have been fine (in my book) if they told everyone from the
start that they planned on doing this, but instead it seems like they are
capitalizing on the loyalty of their fans, getting more money out of them than
they would have otherwise.

I don't think that we can really consider this a win for the pay-what-you-want
business model until an entire album is offered in a lossless format (flac
built-in on Windows like it is on Mac, anyone?), with an easy interface for
listening to the music before buying the album. This might be a good area for
a startup to target: a site to facilitate the streaming and financial aspects
of this kind of business model.

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joeguilmette
this is a neat alternative, and a strong statement. i dont think we've yet to
see what is going to happen to the music industry yet, though.

it's going to happen soon though. the record companies claim the money they do
for distribution and promotion, and i think we all know that piracy provides
distribution and promotion that is infinitely more efficient and better for
both musicians and fans.

so really, what is it exactly that these record companies are selling?

