Free Music!

[mmaestro]

I've not had nearly enough time to write here recently. If I had, I would have written a long and involved post that's been developing in my head since Radiohead first released In Rainbows. The general jist would have been this: it makes economic sense for artists to sell music directly to consumers, in fact it makes sense for them to give it away

Comments

[skington]

As Fake Steve Jobs put it:

[...]beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them.

[...]Their loan-sharking business is being eliminated by low-cost digital recording technology that lets people make an album for very little money. And by letting us [i.e. Apple] build the online music store they've taken themselves out of the distribution business. In the days of vinyl and then CDs, the labels managed to control the value chain by having loads of retailers in a highly fragmented market, and playing them off each other. In the digital world they've got us. And that's it.

With the obvious caveat that the iTunes music store is not the only way to sell music, I think he's pretty much spot on.

[mmaestro]

I think iTunes' big competitor is going to turn out to be artists selling direct. There'll always be a market for one central point, though, so we don't need to hunt through hundreds of different sites. The big question is how sustainable selling at such a high price point is going to be for Apple et al. If Reznor can sell 4 volumes (2 hours of music) for $5, that makes iTunes' fixed pricing kind of exorbitant (and are they still only at 192kbps bitrate? Compared to FLAC, Apple Lossless, and 320kbps mp3 direct from NIN.com, or 256kbps VBR from Amazon, that's not good). Apple will eventually have to embrace variable pricing, and lower pricing (and in my ideal world, different music formats). But I expect that'll mean more music will be consumed on a whim, as the price point gets lower, it may turn out to be a better economic model - music for the price of a candy bar has a certain appeal, if you've got the time to listen to it all.

[misplacedmind]

Very good points all around. Also, thanks for the heads up about the new single. ALSO, Ghosts I-IV had Brian Viglione from the Dresden Dolls on a couple of tracks, so that's the definition of awesome right there :)

I think more and more artists are going to start realizing the points you make. However, you mentioned "In Rainbows" which to me is a pretty poor example. It was great to open the door to conversation, and get the ball rolling on what will hopefully become a trend... but, the problem for me is that about a month or two after it was released for "pay what you want" online, it was released in the stores... with bonus material. So, for people who paid for it the first time around, out of a sense of obligation, or just because they wanted to support the band, this is a REALLY shitty deal, because they now essentially have to buy the entire thing AGAIN just to get the bonus material. (if they want it... which, y'know, I wasn't all that impressed with "In Rainbows" anyway, so...)

[mmaestro]

Well, that's not quite accurate about Radiohead. The commercial release had no additional material - it was the same as what had gone up on the website. There was a limited edition, released directly by Radiohead that you can still only order direct from them for the princely sum of 40 pounds (but hey, that includes international shipping if you need it), and that had additional material, but that was never part of the commercial release

[misplacedmind]

Hmmm. Perhaps the packaging was misleading, then. I could swear that the cd on the shelves at (eg) Barnes & Noble had language that at least implied bonus material. I have no problem with a "limited edition" at all, especially, as you say, because it was mentioned right along with the download info. Guess I was mistaken about the commercial release!

I should probably listen to it a few more times before I pass judgment... but it wasn't, at least, something that truly grabbed me.

[mmaestro]

I don't remember the last Radiohead album that grabbed me as soon as I heard it. Probably The Bends? Given that was a decade ago... they're just a band that it takes a long time to get into their material, I think.