An Interesting Time in Music Indeed
Originally published at This Space Intentionally Left Blank. Please leave any comments there.
I was reading an article this morning outlining an interesting trend that is starting with musical artists. Apparently, we (the consumers) are not the only ones fed up with how the music industry works. The article states that the bands Jamiroquai and Oasis have followed suit of bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails in that they have not renewed industry contracts and are no longer associated with any label. They are all planning on releasing music directly to fans through their websites. This is BIG! All four of these bands have been and are still (somewhat) big names in music, and seperating from the music machine as it works right now like they are doing is probably just the spearhead of things to come. I’d very much like to see more artists follow suit.
For as long as I’ve been savvy to the way music works, I’ve had problems buying music. The way it works is like this: Band makes an album using expensive equipment owned by the label or studio (the band usually has to pay for studio time, otherwise the label takes a bigger “piece of the pie”). The label promotes the album, gives it out to the radio stations (they used to pay stations to play the music, but now they are trying to make stations pay THEM to play the music). The band goes on tour to promote the album. With respect to the album itself, the artist makes (on average) a measly 2-5 cents per album sold. The rest goes to the studio, the producer, etc. but the majority share goes right back into the labels pocket. Screwed up right?
This move by these bands, allows them to get more money (maybe) from their albums and allows them to license the music how they choose to. For instance, Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) says that he doesn’t care if people download his music from P2P networks for free because it gets the music out there and if people really like it, they’ll pay in other ways to show their appreciation.
The concept that Radiohead came up with when they went “free agent” was the concept of a “pay what you think its worth” album. In other words, when you purchase the album (digital download only) from the website you enter your own price whether it be $0 or $20 or $100. Its completely up to you. I really like this concept, it allows you to download the album for free to try it out and then go ahead and buy a second copy at a price you feel worthy of the album after having listened to it. If you are a returning Radiohead fan you can start off buying the album for whatever you want to pay for it.
I’m curious as to what license the album is released under and I can’t find anything out there on the internet about it. Anybody have any idea?