Radiohead’s bold Web experiment
The members of British rock band Radiohead are thumbing their noses at record labels, selling their latest album, In Rainbows, via the Web. Fans decide how much they want to pay for the download. Could this experiment turn the music industry on its head?
Radiohead aren’t the first to try this. In 2000, horror writer Stephen King serialised a novel, The Plant, on the Internet. Sales were disappointing and King quickly abandoned the idea. But a lot has changed in the technology world since then, and the idea of buying entertainment on the Web, especially music, is now second-nature to consumers in the developed world.
Radiohead’s decision is disturbing for record labels, who justify their role in the industry for the work they do marketing artists’ work, co-ordinating its production and distribution, and scouting out and developing new talent.
If Radiohead’s venture is successful, it could turn the music industry on its head. If artists are able to produce, market and sell their own music using modern communications technology, why should they hand over a big chunk of their earnings to a record company?
After all, many aspiring artists are using the Internet, especially social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook, to market themselves. Bands such as British indie rockers Arctic Monkeys and American emo rock band My Chemical Romance have effectively used MySpace and other websites to break into the big time.
Radiohead’s online sales experiment has an interesting twist: the band has told fans to pay what they think the album is worth. That means that if they wanted to, fans could pay just R10 for the album. Or they could download it without spending a cent.
Best of all, the record is free of digital rights management (DRM), the annoying anti-piracy technology meant to prevent digital music from being copied endlessly. DRM is a hassle for law-abiding consumers who want to play music they have purchased legitimately on multiple devices they own.
In fact, DRM has proved an unmitigated disaster (so far, at least). Consumers are increasingly demanding DRM-free music, shunning songs and albums that restrict what they can do with the music they purchase.
The industry hasn’t helped its cause by suing people, among them young children, for copying music from file-sharing networks. There is a widespread belief that the big record labels are not only unwilling to embrace modernity but are also avaricious and uncaring. The powerful Recording Industry Association of America has stumbled from one PR disaster to another as it has tried to fend off the threat posed by online piracy.
Many consumers, especially wired youngsters, don’t think twice about copying a song using peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. They have little respect for copyright. It will be interesting to see whether those same consumers will pony up some cash to buy the new Radiohead album. Will consumers be more likely to pay artists who sell their music directly, given that the money will be going to the people who made the music, rather than most of it ending up in some record company’s coffers? And if they are, will they attach the same value to the music that record companies do?
One mustn’t downplay the threat that piracy poses, not only to the big labels but also to artists. People who would never walk into a shop and steal a loaf of bread think nothing of downloading and sharing music and movies. But if everyone were to steal music online there would be no commercial music industry. It is piracy, not independently minded recording artists such as Radiohead, that poses the greatest challenge to the record labels.
There’s no doubt though that Radiohead is adding to the industry’s myriad headaches.
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