2007 October « .oO Tailwind

A lot has been written about the Radiohead free album thing over the past week or so. If you missed it here’s a précis for you.

Having split from their record label Radiohead decided that they wanted to get their latest album ‘In Rainbows’ to fans as quickly as possible in a kind of cut-the-crap sort of way.

To do this they started placing small icons all over their website to stir interest. Then they announced ‘coming soon’ then they announce ‘October 10th’. this was all prior to announcing that the album ‘In Rainbows’ will only be available on the website for fans to ‘pay as little or as much a they like for the album’. Which effectively means, bar the 45p credit card fee, Radiohead fans and non-fans for that matter ca obtain their new album for free.

Aside from the download, for £40 you can buy a special box set of 2 x vinyl, 2 x CDs and other Radiohead merchandise including a hardback book, photos and more that will be delivered at a later date.

It is reported that in a single day, Radiohead may have made as much as $10 million and that some fans may have paid the maximum value that the system was set-up to process; £99 (or about $200).

£99 for a Radiohead album? Not on my watch, but then I’m hardly a fan.

When I first heard about this move, which Oasis, The Charlatans and Jamiroquai have been quick to follow (in words and promises at least), I wondered about the value exchange between band and fan, between band and semi-fan and between band and non-fan.

It stands to reason that people will pay a reasonable amount for a band they have enjoyed for a few years but what was thought about the masses that would undoubtedly pay the minimum? It’s clearly a good way of reaching a fringe audience as the risk to the purchaser, in terms of not liking the album is reduced.

I may even consider buying it myself, but I’m distinctly a non-fan for no other reason than the fact that I hate music designed to meet your melancholy requirements. No-one needs suicide songs in their life IMO. Happy, bouncy, funky get-down on the get-down for me. Brass, bass and a side-serving of thang if you please.

Anyway, back to the album and some figures discussed on our internal mailing list at LBi:

Apparently they had 1.2 million downloads in 2 days at an average of £5 giving £6 million ($12 million).

Apparently (again), in order to make a comparable amount to a conventional contract with a record company they would need to shift 1/2 million copies at 75p each.
Good business. Easy-peasey.

Now as I’ve said, I’m not a fan of Radiohead but you simply have to admire this level of disruption. Record companies have had it coming for years charging us up to £15 ($30) for a CD and only passing £1-2 through to the artist. No-one will be crying for them, it’s time for some serious reinvention or as Tom Peters would say ‘ Time to re-imagine’.

Record companies used to add value by enabling artists to actually make records then use their marketing clout to get the track airtime, exposure and rack-space. Of course this is no cheap endeavour and anyone who thinks music should be free is failing to see the costs of getting produced and getting out there. Yes, you have your Arctic Monkeys, Libertines and Lily Allen stories but in general the whole product life-cycle of a music creation and distribution is a costly old thing.

Record companies have missed the opprotunities that digital, multi-channel delivery offers them. they’ve stuck their head in the sand demonstrating classic long-tail behaviour and are now quaking in their boots.

So with that said, CD sales plummeting and downloads rising from 0 in 2003 to in excess of 26 million in 2005 it’s time to allow fans and bands to make sweet beautiful music together. To cut out the middle men.

Or is it?

There’s a consumer life-cycle associated with music. In four phases you generally:

Discover new music
Manage it
Use/experience it
Share it (though not always)

In order to discover it you need to be introduced to it, you need mechanisms of discovery, you need something to inspire that ‘harvester’ in you to go collect. You need ways in which to store and manage it, you need ways to ‘use/experience’ it. Which is key as there are more live performances now than ever. And now that they’ve stopped selling the traditional C90 cassette, you need ways to share your music.

Unless of course it’s a ‘guilty pleasure’ and you don’t want anyone to know you still listen to it.

There are more bands than ever and you needs ways to accurately cut through the crap.

So could all bands start giving music away for free? Well, of course Radiohead are afforded the capacity to try this experiment having been benefactors of the old model (please don’t argue that they’ve been screwed by the record companies for years - that’s another discussion entirely), but it’s still a bloody good experiment.

I think this is an interesting way to reach a wider fan-base. Ask fans to pay what they want and you’ll probably see a similar affect to those ‘honesty boxes’ you get in WH Smiths (UK newsagents) where you drop your change into the box. While some people cheat the system, invariably it works out okay fr the retailer.

See people are decent folk. Well, some.

This type of ‘honesty box’ culture is fairly widespread and numerous bands have tried this before. See these guys of The Mooncake Project who ask for donations for their wares. Software too has long been in ‘donation-ware’ mode.

So, some questions:

Does this approach create a tier system for bands and their relationship with fans? Cheapskate fans and top-dollar fans?
Does this mean that Radiohead can now segment their audience and offer value adds to the higher paying public?
Would fans consider subscribing to an artists for £30 a year and funding their work in a more committed way?
How much could Radiohead expect to make overall? And what percentage will download for free?
Would there be secret pay-bands where real fans (people who pay decent mounts for the album) get some ‘extras’, maybe some extra tracks, some studio snippets, some images, video, advance tickets etc etc

Variations on the theme are popping up all over the place, Jamiroquai and Oasis have suggested they’ll follow suit, Jamiroquai having recently ended their 8 album deal with Sony. In the same week indie legends The Charlatans went one better than Radiohead and made their new single You Cross My Path, available from radio station Xfm’s website at no charge.

The diminutive purple pop-star, the-artist-who-I-will-call-Prince, also made waves when he released his new album for free with the Mail on Sunday. Okay, so you had yo actually be seen buying a Mail on Sunday but essentially free if not socially-suicidal. You could argue that this was to promote his 21 night event at the O2 Arena in London, which was of course the real money spinner.

Then of course there is Madonna, who’s signed a 10 year £60 million deal with Live Nation the concert ticket search people. The deal sees Madge gain cash and shares in exchange for excluive rights to merchandising. Apparently Live Nation have struck 360 similar deals with the Madonna one obviously being the largest.

T-shirt of a 60-year-old Madonna anyone..?

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