Changing the game

Posted on December 16, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized | | Written by Gary Reid

You probably heard about Radiohead’s In Rainbows album that was put on sale, well for whatever you were willing to pay, even if that was nothing.

The deal has now finished and the album is now a Â£40 boxed set with all kinds of vinyl goodness included.

Andrew Keen, the sometime Web 2.0 anti-christ has written a piece on the economic success of the groups venture.

So has it been an economic “success? Yes. According to Pareles’ myopic economic rationale, Radiohead have made money on the deal. Apparently, the average price paid for the album was $2.26 (in October 60% of downloaders paid nothing and the other 40% of mugs paid $6). And, given that bands normally only gets 15% of proceeds from a traditional studio album, Radiohead consider their “In Rainbows” strategy as a success

What Andrew doesn’t appear to like about what Radiohead did is their willingness to sacrifice the income of middlemen in pursuit of their own profit.

After all, Radiohead is essentially screwing the music business. What they would call “disintermediation” is actually putting music business people out of work. Jon Pareles’ “middlemen” are real people with real jobs and real families. However much Radiohead might hate the “exploitative” labels, it’s hard to see the real benefit here for the music business. If Radiohead had a real social conscience, they would start their own label, employ their own “middlemen”, and help build — rather than destroy — human infrastructure in a decimated industry.

I think the point is that what Radiohead did is of no use to the current music industry and why should it be, no industry can maintain itself unchanged in perpetuity. Even without Radiohead’s ‘pay what you want’ campaign the music industry will change, middlemen will lose their jobs, the only thing the music industry really needs to understand is ‘change or die’.

Having had my fair share of music industry experience I know it needs to change, however all of the illegal download stuff won’t change it, this just gives the industry something to survive against. What Radiohead did was pour weed killer on the roots.

If the current music business dies it doesn’t mean the end of music.