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Whether Radiohead makes money from this experiment, or even whether most people got the album from a p2p network or the band themselves is really immaterial. What matters it that Radiohead have managed to knit some very interesting questions about the value of music into their music itself. The experience of acquiring the recording forced some net-neutral debates to the front of the public imagination.
The potential threats and capabilities of technology have long formed the ground for Radiohead's music. OK Computer vaguely warned about networked society, and In Rainbows comes to us ten years later through the network itself. It's just too good to ignore.

Posted by: Ren Bostelaar | November 1, 2007 12:27 PM

I think Trent Reznor has been the sole voice of reason with this entire digital music 'revolution'.

Some choice quotes -

Posted on [05_13_2007]

As the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more. A couple of examples that quickly come to mind:

* The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne’s record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).

By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: “It’s because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out - you know, true fans. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy.”
So… I guess as a reward for being a “true fan” you get ripped off.

* The dreaded EURO Maxi-single. Nothing but a consumer rip-off that I’ve been talked into my whole career. No more.

The point is, I am trying my best to make sure the music and items NIN puts in the marketplace have value, substance and are worth you considering purchasing. I am not allowing Capital G to be repackaged into several configurations that result in you getting ripped off.

---

On the shutdown of OiNK.cd

Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

--

Posted by: Ross | November 1, 2007 01:00 PM

The internet is the ultimate "free" market. Open for interpretation, what I mean by that is with all the file sharing and easily downloadable 'anything', it has increased the need for both quality and foundation in the entertainment industry (specifically the music industry).

What bands have had to do is offer something the internet cannot - the portrait of loyalty. An example of this is the 2007 "Ozzfest", where free tickets to the show were included in the purchase of Ozzy Osbourne's new CD "Black Rain" had got major media coverage and promoted not only his CD but his concert tour.

Many bands have had to do add similar bonuses to the selling of their CD. This has made album releases of the last 10 years very interesting; what will producers do to attract the buyers back to buying instead of downloading?

Oddly enough, most bands have their new albums in full for free on their websites. The audio plays automatically when you visit their site and it is the full version of the tracks. Strange, why would they do that?...

Not saying I am a fan but Britney Spear's producers did the most ingenious pre-release promotion of her new album using the internet. They released "Leaked Tracks" months prior to the release of her album. Every week it seemed like you would hear of a new leaked track… rumour has it, none of those tracks are on here album! The hype they caused and the publicity it received was enormous.

Bands are brands - and if a company can use the internet to promote their brands and make record profits, then so can a band.

What I think some record companies don't realize is that the only reason people would rather download than buy is because a huge population of buyers don't want to support greedy record companies. There are many bands that I would buy their album, but only if the money would go directly to the band. It seems only a small percentage of that money goes to their pockets.

The law does not need to prevent either side of this teeter-totter from acting as it has, since both have been benefiting from it. At first, record companies were afraid the internet would crush them… until they invented ways to use it to their advantage. It has increased the quality for the buyers and gave the sellers the ultimate tool to promote and expose their products.

Posted by: Dustin P. | November 1, 2007 02:29 PM

I agree with Cory Doctorow that culture needs more protection from the law than from the fans. This is especially true in the wake of a revision by the CRTC of its policy regarding the Internet. In the new context created by globalization, the idea of willing to curb the free flow of information from all over the world is an anachronism. It smacks of soviet style control of public discourse. Not surprisingly, The CRTC is wading into this field under the pressure of the disc industry and the Socan, which cloak themselves as the ultimate defenders of Canadian culture. In fact, what they are defending is an ancient order of things that worked quite well during the previous century but is completely out of tune with the new context and the new possibilities open by the Internet and the virtual tools. The Internet has open a “frictionless” virtual world of culture where artists can easily find a public. This is the main motivation for a true creator.

Posted by: Christian Vandendorpe | November 1, 2007 03:54 PM

Have you ever heard of the Grateful Dead? Probably, and of the of the reasons that they became sooo popular was they did not stop their fans from pirating their music. At all their shows fans were allowed to tape and distribute their music. Yes, it did produce sales, but what is wrong with that?

Posted by: Simballa Talu | November 1, 2007 06:48 PM

Law makers are just passing the laws that the think that society needs. I don't blame the politicians as much as I do the apathetic public who aren't getting involved.

Musicians and music fans need protection from the old-economy music labels. The music industry isn't one happy family that sees some "outsider" as a threat. There are songwriters, performers and "makers" of recordings (AKA: music labels). When the cost of hardware to record and distribute music was expensive, record labels dominated. Now that this hardware is cheap, and the huge capital costs that required massive loans is largely gone, the roll of the labels is also largely gone.

These labels who previously were seen as representing musicians no longer represent musicians, but oppose the interests of musicians.

We -- musicians (performers and composers) and music fans -- need to talk to politicians and let them know that it isn't the 1980's any more. We need laws which reflect the new technological and economic realities, not some sort of back-to-the-future nonsense where laws are being created to try to protect the successful companies from the 1980's in their competition against modern musicians and music fans. In the current changes underway, unauthorized p2p filesharing is an insignificant factor compared to all the competitive and other factors.

Canadians need to realize that the federal government placed copyright revision as one of the priorities in the throne speech, and they really are currently thinking in terms of laws to better protect the 1980's from the new millennium.

(BTW: would love to have added links, but this comment system seems to think that any messages with links is SPAM).

Posted by: Russell McOrmond | November 2, 2007 12:50 PM

The results from Radiohead's experiment are, apparently, in:

http://entertainment1.sympatico.msn.ca/Most+opt+not+to+pay+for+Radioheads+download+album+but+many+pay+6+or+more/Music/MusicNews/ContentPosting.aspx?isfa=1&newsitemid;=38945022&feedname;=CP-ENTERTAINMENT&show;=True&number;=5&showbyline;=True&subtitle;=&detect;=&ab;

An average of $6 per purchase sounds like it failed. But let's not be too too hasty in judging that.

For one, Radiohead got their album out in a format that did away with CD pressing, jewel cases, printed artwork, shrinkwrap (combined about 4% of a CD's retail price) transportation/delivery costs (not sure, but let's guess 5% of retail) and percentages going to distributors & retail outlets (combined about 50-60% of retail prices).

Assuming that a conventionally-released CD would have retailed for $20, just $9 of that is left to be divided between the label and the artist.

Even if the label, with its A&R; staff and marketing costs, decides to split that money 50/50 with the artist (and, having worked for a record company and in the industry for the better part of a decade, I can't recall seeing any major label be that generous), Radiohead would have stood to gain only $4.50 per CD.

So I think the band gaining $6 per download is actually triumphant and demonstrates how technology has rendered record labels largely obsolete, at least for artists with massive fan bases.

Posted by: declan macmanus | November 8, 2007 06:48 AM

Your question is flawed.

Artists are not a monolith. Peer to peer may make things better for NEW artists, but ESTABLISHED artists are probably supported by the old models.

What is good for Dianna Krall may not be good for the Great Lakes Swimmers.

pdc

Posted by: Paul Creighton | November 24, 2007 05:47 PM