How Much Did You Pay?
After Radiohead announced it would allow fans to download its album for whatever price they chose, about a third of the first million or so downloads paid nothing, according to a British survey. But many paid more than $20. The average price was about $8. That is, people paid for something they could get for free.
A little more than $5. As an acquaintance of mine said, “they’ll get every nickel from every album they sell, as opposed to a nickel for every album they sell.”
Who says you can’t make money giving stuff away.
My point exactly. Tons of companies do it all the time. Again, call me a communist, but I really believe that the better model is one where people provide their music on the Web for free or very inexpensive downloading using a Creative Commons agreement, or else at least don’t get hot and bothered when users share their music via P2P. The current model doesn’t work, hasn’t worked for some time (if at all), and is dead (the record companies just won’t realize it until the patient has begun to decompose).
I paid 5 pounds, so about $10 or so.
I’m gathering that Radiohead has made $8 million in revenue for a free product in a week’s time. Awesome! Who says you can’t make money giving stuff away.
A friend burned me a CDR of the new Radiohead album which he did not pay for. And obviously I did not pay him. Now THAT would be piracy. But if and when they release a commercial CD of it (which I’ve heard they intend to), I will undoubtedly buy it. Call me crazy or anachronistic, but I actually want something that’s physically tangible and I’m willing to pay for it. Ironically, I still haven’t had time to give it the album a listen, but I hope to very soon.
$0
I paid 7 pounds, so along with the “service” charge it works out to around 15 bucks.
I’m not at all surprised–that sounds about right. And at the risk of again being labeled a “commie,” I’ll say that this is how things should be.