To much fanfare, Radiohead offered its latest album for free via download off the web. Fans would have the ability to pay whatever price they decided was appropriate for the album. Regardless of people's views on the subject of the music industry's business model, everyone agreed this was a bold move and eagerly awaited the results.
The gist of the article below is that ComScore, a company that measures online
activity, conducted a study focused on people downloading the Radiohead album. ComScore claims that the study proved that 62% paid nothing and most of the actual purchasers paid less less than $4.
Radiohead promptly contested the study's results and asserted that it was impossible for outside organizations to have accurate data. The band, however, declined to release its own sales figures.
More info can be found in the link or through normal searching.
Brief Radiohead Article
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So what do we think about this experiment? Do you trust fans to pay for the album? If so, would the same result apply to less cultish, more mainstream fans? Can Radiohead's model successfully apply to writing i.e. Stephen King offers one of his books online via the same system?
In which a group of friends get together and prod each other to refine their craft.
Write monkey, write!
2 comments:
A few things...
I believe the system of "on your honor" can work. The book "Wikinomics" speaks to ample objective examples of this, as does "Cluetrain Manifesto", et al.
Of course what's required by the new biz models are a healthy helping of balls and willingness to see things differently almost all around. The sources cited above provide examples of this kind of thing in various mediums, including the written word.
This also rings true on an inner level, with me; a necessary test as I poke about the world, in my own actions, and in many I see around me. I download, but I also pay for the stuff I like. Is merit worth more, or is content worth less? Although I know there will be tragedies as people, markets, and executives everywhere adjust to reality, I know you can't stop the signal.
Also, it is ridiculous for an entity outside Radiohead ( and their posse companies ) or their ISP to have anything but the vaguest notions of what traffic or sales figures might be like. When Hemp and I set up this blog, we included a snippet of code for Google Analytics, so we could chart how wildly popular WMW became. Almost from the beginning, we saw things that made us not trust what Google was telling us. This was with code we inserted ourselves on our own site, and with Google driving the guesswork. Radiohead might not be trusted to be completely honest, but I have very little faith in ComScore.
thanks to RADIOHEAD and people like you for good stuff
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