Radiohead releases free album: others to follow

[Bene]

Telegraph Article

Here, people are giving what they want to in return for music. It could be compared to Steve's donations from people who find his site helpful. I am curious to see how all this unfolds. Maybe several decades from now, people will pay for goods and services based on how much they think its worth or how much they can. hey just a radical thought!

[ticktockclok]

I read about this in the Chicago Tribune today. The major consensus is that if they give us the opportunity to pay what we want, we will pay it.

[Steve Pavlina]

I'm very curious to see how well they do. The advantage to the donations model is that they could keep all the donation money for themselves, but if they sold albums through a record company, they'd only receive a fraction of the price of each CD as royalties. I suspect their total sales volume (in dollars) would be much higher with traditional distribution, but because of the royalty rate, they could potentially make more money from donations. Plus they'll build a customer list they can use for promoting future albums and for back-end sales. It could definitely work for them.

If you already go direct though, I think selling products or generating income in other ways will usually trump donations. I receive donations every day, but they only add up to about 5% of total income. $50-75 per day in donations is typical. Nevertheless, there are occasionally some really good days for donations. Yesterday I received $369 in donations, which was unusually high because $300 came from a single donor.

[Bene]

Excellent insight Steve! For example they could use the information to geo-target their concerts through email. What better marketing than to an audience who is already sold on your music?

For some reason, I knew you'd post in this thread.

[Gene]

I saw a blurb on the morning news that reported the average payment received by Radiohead was $10.00 which is a lot bigger amount of money than releasing through a record label!

[Velvet]

B.t.w., the album is excellent. It doesn't sound like anything they've done before, and contains a few songs that are right up there with their best.

I paid about $3.50, which I think is fair for a 10-song, no-cover-package release, and more than they'd make if I'd bought it from a label.