Maybe you haven't heard about it yet, but Radiohead is releasing their next album, In Rainbows, in a few days and people can pay whatever they want for it. Yeah, that's right: you can download the album from their website for whatever price you feel is fair (of course there's some sort of "base price" or "transaction fee"). Magnatune, an online music store for independent artists, has been doing something similar to that for quite a while: their suggested price for albums is 8 bucks, but you can pay anything between 5 and 18 bucks... and, the best part is that, according to their statistics, people pay around 9 dollar on average... cool, isn't it? But that's a very small scale label/online store with basically no famous/mainstream artist (which doesn't keep them from being really good, check this out for example)... I have no idea what's gonna happen when Radiohead (arguably one of the biggest bands in the world for over a decade now) tries it... but it's gonna be mighty interesting to see.
I think everybody agrees that the model we have today (and that's been there for quite a few decades now) is dying... file-sharing, cheaper equipment, near-zero distribution costs (through the net, that is)... the future certainly looks grim for big record companies... but is pay-what-you-feel-like a plausible option?? Is it best fit for big, famous acts like Radiohead, or independent artists like the ones in Magnatune's catalog?? The next few weeks will tell us a great deal about it all... by the way, the most you can pay for Radiohead's new album is 99 pounds... interesting to know they put a limit there...
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