Sunday, October 14, 2007
In Rainbows: My thoughts on Radiohead’s honesty box approach
You Can’t Put A Price On Art
If we ask, what is an album leak worth? The obvious answer depends on the content of the album. So what is a highly anticipated seventh album from the world’s greatest rock group worth? That would be asking to put a price on a piece of art.
How can you price-tag music? The recording industry has established itself by setting a fixed price for each album, with disregard of its greatness or mediocrity, so it is known exactly how much grossing profit will be earned; therefore the business succeeds in operation.
With Radiohead’s new approach to distribute their new album In Rainbows, their argument states that it isn’t all about money: you can’t put a price on greatness. It is a bold attitude (and a generous one) that signifies commitment to art instead of just business, like music fans like myself strongly believe in. But then asking their fans to put a price on a record they haven’t heard yet seems a bit short-sighted, so it all comes down to trust and loyalty, and these are the key characteristics to building and maintaining your audience.
For Radiohead fans, who are some of the most die-hard you can get (me included), it would be second nature to buy the album, and whether I’ve heard it or not, it would still be in my collection. I didn’t put any price down for the download because I knew I’d be buying the box set in December, and thus, I have earned their trust. Even if I was indifferent to Radiohead, I wouldn’t put down any price until I’d heard it (unless it was going to a good cause), in which case I would wait until the physical copy came out next year, and if it was good, I would buy that. It would be apt if you can go back to the download page once you’ve heard it and pay how much you think it deserves, like a ‘try before you buy’ initiative.
But the question remains, how long are they going to keep the download online for? This then goes back to the trustworthiness of the consumer, which Radiohead are basing their experiment on.
With this download idea, everyone (who has an internet connection) will hear it at the same time. But then that could be a bad thing because you’re establishing a set moment for your audience to hear your music, and it shouldn’t have to work like that. The best musical experiences happen spontaneously when you’re least conscious of the listening activity, like hearing a song at a wedding or a school disco which is perfect for that moment, which subsequently becomes most memorable and personal to you.
Bear in mind that Radiohead want this record to be brought into the mass marketplace so if they go on to make more millions than they did even without a record label, they could in fact become the most powerful quintet in the world and this would (hopefully) signal the end of record labels and record retailers: Revolution!
This isn’t the first time a band has taken a big step away from their record label by releasing their record online for free, but the significance is in Radiohead’s reputation and their gargantuan fan-base, which stretches globally. Radiohead have once experimented with anti-commercial marketing with Kid A when they decided not to release any singles or videos (the album incidentally topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic), and their first album release without a label couldn’t have come at a worse time for record companies, with music listeners continuing to illegally download music instead of buying it, and finding out that one of their biggest selling bands are choosing to experiment with sole-marketing is a kick in the teeth for them. The reliance on record companies and marketing teams to produce, commercialize and promote music records needs reconsideration for the modern age, and I believe this could be the change.
The ‘honesty box’ strategy is symbolic of the industry’s direction towards the digital market, but there are difficult problems putting down a price on electronic data. The most important difference between a CD and a digital download is that one is a real physical object that you can hold in your hand and the other isn’t. Frankly, it’s better to own a physical copy than a digital one, and despite some benefits of digital downloads such as accessibility and playability, this mentality will never change.
If I was to pay for the download, then I should be able to get the physical copy free because I have already made my contribution to the product - So what about paying what you want for physical copies? Packaging and material cost aside, like a download, like music, it just doesn’t have a value. In truth, it’s all about time and who can wait for the real thing. In any case, bands aren’t fully reliant on album sales when they’re playing concerts to bring in the wages, but how long will it be until they let you pay what you want to see a live show?
Above all, Radiohead have looked beyond the commercial potentials of In Rainbows and embraced their audience before everything else, which is fundamentally what making music in a band is all about: Sharing intimately the most important value to the entire world.
If we ask, what is an album leak worth? The obvious answer depends on the content of the album. So what is a highly anticipated seventh album from the world’s greatest rock group worth? That would be asking to put a price on a piece of art.
How can you price-tag music? The recording industry has established itself by setting a fixed price for each album, with disregard of its greatness or mediocrity, so it is known exactly how much grossing profit will be earned; therefore the business succeeds in operation.
With Radiohead’s new approach to distribute their new album In Rainbows, their argument states that it isn’t all about money: you can’t put a price on greatness. It is a bold attitude (and a generous one) that signifies commitment to art instead of just business, like music fans like myself strongly believe in. But then asking their fans to put a price on a record they haven’t heard yet seems a bit short-sighted, so it all comes down to trust and loyalty, and these are the key characteristics to building and maintaining your audience.
For Radiohead fans, who are some of the most die-hard you can get (me included), it would be second nature to buy the album, and whether I’ve heard it or not, it would still be in my collection. I didn’t put any price down for the download because I knew I’d be buying the box set in December, and thus, I have earned their trust. Even if I was indifferent to Radiohead, I wouldn’t put down any price until I’d heard it (unless it was going to a good cause), in which case I would wait until the physical copy came out next year, and if it was good, I would buy that. It would be apt if you can go back to the download page once you’ve heard it and pay how much you think it deserves, like a ‘try before you buy’ initiative.
But the question remains, how long are they going to keep the download online for? This then goes back to the trustworthiness of the consumer, which Radiohead are basing their experiment on.
With this download idea, everyone (who has an internet connection) will hear it at the same time. But then that could be a bad thing because you’re establishing a set moment for your audience to hear your music, and it shouldn’t have to work like that. The best musical experiences happen spontaneously when you’re least conscious of the listening activity, like hearing a song at a wedding or a school disco which is perfect for that moment, which subsequently becomes most memorable and personal to you.
Bear in mind that Radiohead want this record to be brought into the mass marketplace so if they go on to make more millions than they did even without a record label, they could in fact become the most powerful quintet in the world and this would (hopefully) signal the end of record labels and record retailers: Revolution!
This isn’t the first time a band has taken a big step away from their record label by releasing their record online for free, but the significance is in Radiohead’s reputation and their gargantuan fan-base, which stretches globally. Radiohead have once experimented with anti-commercial marketing with Kid A when they decided not to release any singles or videos (the album incidentally topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic), and their first album release without a label couldn’t have come at a worse time for record companies, with music listeners continuing to illegally download music instead of buying it, and finding out that one of their biggest selling bands are choosing to experiment with sole-marketing is a kick in the teeth for them. The reliance on record companies and marketing teams to produce, commercialize and promote music records needs reconsideration for the modern age, and I believe this could be the change.
The ‘honesty box’ strategy is symbolic of the industry’s direction towards the digital market, but there are difficult problems putting down a price on electronic data. The most important difference between a CD and a digital download is that one is a real physical object that you can hold in your hand and the other isn’t. Frankly, it’s better to own a physical copy than a digital one, and despite some benefits of digital downloads such as accessibility and playability, this mentality will never change.
If I was to pay for the download, then I should be able to get the physical copy free because I have already made my contribution to the product - So what about paying what you want for physical copies? Packaging and material cost aside, like a download, like music, it just doesn’t have a value. In truth, it’s all about time and who can wait for the real thing. In any case, bands aren’t fully reliant on album sales when they’re playing concerts to bring in the wages, but how long will it be until they let you pay what you want to see a live show?
Above all, Radiohead have looked beyond the commercial potentials of In Rainbows and embraced their audience before everything else, which is fundamentally what making music in a band is all about: Sharing intimately the most important value to the entire world.
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