capitalism in rainbows
Most Fans Paid $0 for Radiohead Album.
It’s not hard to imagine that those people would have paid $0 for the album via a torrent anyway.
What I’d like to know is how the artists themselves fare by letting fans pay what they want and download the music versus the traditional label+distribution model. If 40% of all downloaders pay in the neighborhood of 50% of the regular retail price of the CD, that’s 20% of every CD sold/obtained going to the artist*, which does not sound too shabby.
I paid about $10 US. I think. My conversion to pounds may have been off.
* Minus the burden of online distribution of course, which I would hazard is quite a bit lighter than that of physical distribution.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
I paid about $7.50 for it. In general I would be happier knowing more of my money went to the artist than to the label, so I hope this sort of thing catches on. Good album too!
November 7th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Glad you blogged this … I was telling Alex about this yesterday after lunch.
My friend Andrew did this with an EP he recorded this summer—100% online distribution, pay what you want. I never did ask him how many people paid, and I didn’t really have the best statistics on how many downloads were done. Ah me. But that said, yes, the online distribution is far cheaper than the physical distribution [by orders of magnitude], and 20% return on a traditional labor deal would be fantastic.