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    Monday, October 1, 2007

    Radiohead release their new album -- pay what you think it's worth


    Radiohead has always been one of my favourite bands. What I find fascinating is that every single album has been great, ranging from their mainstream, slightly juvenile Pablo Honey to their innovative experimentation on Amnesiac and Kid A. Their upcoming album, entitled In Rainbows, is only available through their Website. What is interesting is that you can pay what you think it's worth. This is an ingenious idea, and I for one will certainly support it. The reason is that I believe this might be the only solution to piracy. Think about it for a minute. If you could pay, say, 1 USD for an entire album, would you ever go through the hazzle of trying to download it on e-mule, piratebay or any other pirate way? I certainly would not. Moreover, I would hardly bother burning it to a cd and transfer it to my other computers. I would simply buy and download it on every computer I have. 4 USD for having the album ready-to-play on any computer, without the hazzle of downloading a possibly corrupted pirated version and (if applicable) without any feeling of guilt sounds great to me. It's about time the record companies realize that a digital copy just cannot be priced and treated like a physical copy. Thus, slapping a real-life price tag on a virtual product doesn't work. Instead, they should focus on exploiting the peculiar characteristics of digital media in the way that Radiohead does. I'm pretty sure the record companies are following this closely, so I urge you to support Radiohead's vision -- even if you're only paying 1 USD for the album (this still means 1 USD more in revenue with hardly any costs). If we show that this model works, perhaps the rest of the industry will catch up.

    1 comment:

    Metus said...

    Finally got to buy the album today, after site had been beyond reach for two days. I ended up paying 2 GBP for it (hmm, just realized I don't have a pound sign on my keyboard.. weird). This was not only because I'm cheap, but also the price I actually think a digital album is worth. That is, if every album could be downloaded for 2 pounds/euro/usd, I would never again be tempted to download illegally.