There has been a lot of talk about the Radiohead In Rainbows CD sale strategy. Some say that they can do it because they have a following, have sold tons of records in the past, and their concerts are well, sold out. Same is said about NIN remix a initiative started by Trent Reznor, and more recently with Reznor collaborating with Saul Williams, on the NiggyTardust album.
I personally prefer the model put forth by Reznor and Williams, you have two options:
- Pay nothing and get the album on 192kps mp3’s.
- Pay 5 bucks and get it in lossless (flac), or mp3’s at 320kps or 192kps.
I of course payed the 5 bucks, and got it in lossless. Those were the best spent 5 bucks in my life.Until I saw Trent Reznor post on Saul Williams, I had never heard of him, that does not mean he’s not a establish artist, I think he is, and if not he should, he is really good.
I believe all bands whether starting out or not (specially starting out) should embrace this model. For starters it’s a lot cheaper, than making a couple of thousands or hundred thousands copies of an album to sell on shows. You will also be available to a wider audience, and if you do a bit of research you can do marketing for your album for free. Now I do think you should charge for your album, and if you are inclined, you can give the album for free in 192kps, and charge for lossless quality.
But how much to charge? Well traditionally bands would, calculate to break even on the cost of making the album we would need to sell x amount of albums at y price, and hopefully get a benefit margin of z. Now this is a different medium. For starters you will never run out, or need to reprint CD’s they are always available, so you can still make money of an album, even if you have four more out. If you get your own domain, and host, your website + music + other info, you reduce cost. If you use services like lastfm you can market yourself as stated above, sending new/press clips to sites like boingboing and others you can effectively reach a bigger audience, than just old fashioned news paper, and word of mouth. By this I don’t mean you shouldn’t use the traditional mediums, by all means use everything and all at your disposal. So taking the above into account, I would recommend charging $US5.00, the highest I would go is $US10.00. I think a good margin of difference between the prices of CD’s and online media is needed to make this a success. Most CD’s are way overpriced.
This a brave new world for musicians, and instead of fearing it, you should embrace it and make it your own. The level of control in all ways and forms you can attain with this model, will only empower you to make a better living, and making better music for your fans.
By the way this is a must read, and yet another reason, why the stated above is a good idea.
2 Comments
I think the model works for their specific audience, that may care about bit rate. But in general, I don’t think it would work as well for everything. I’m pretty aware of bitrates and their advantages, and I’m fine with 192kbps, which is actually the one I use for ripping CDs. Higher than that, I can’t tell the difference and it’s a waste of space in my case. Hell, about a third of my music library is 128kpbs, and I’m very happy with it.
The point I’m making is, I don’t think bitrate is a big enough a feature to tempt the majority of the people to pay for music.
I don’t think the model is based on bit rate, I know it sounds that way from what I wrote, but that’s due to my preference for flac over mp3.
Whether there is an audible difference between mp3 bit rates, flac, and CD has been debated by people with more knowledge, and better ears than mine, and the results are mixed, so I wont go into that.
My understanding of using flac instead of mp3, is to give the customer the possibility of burning said music to CD, with a minimal lost, if any at all.
So when you pay $5 bucks for downloading the flac version, is effectively analogous to paying $5 bucks for the CD. This can be done, because they save by not having to pay for the medium. In the case of Saul William, you get the booklet in a pdf file, as well as lyrics and other relevant information.
In my opinion this far superior. It is however true that given that most people uses Ipod’s and itunes the use of flac is not ideal for those people, however decoding the files, and re-encoding them to Apple lossless is a painless ritual, but I understand most will not want to bother. Hence the offer for 320kbps mp3.
People are more concern with size, and good enough, when they should be more interested in the sound and the music. Given the same goes the other way, people can be to involve with lossless that they forget the music.
For me the ability to have a clear and as pure a reproduction of what was done in the studio is important. Having a good sound system. Will make the differences more audible, and palpable.
That’s been my experience.