*WE ARE ALL THE BIGGEST RADIOHEAD FANS ON THE PLANET!*

(currently listening to: Pablo Honey)

I know, I know the long tail changes this dynamic and bands will organically become famous, but bands do benefit from the marketing muscle the labels have. Personally the trade off isn’t worth it (that is selling your soul to corporate record companies), but I just wanted to state the situation is not black and white. I don’t know if the swarm will find the next Radiohead.

It’s called Bomb The Music Industry!

Also Harvey Danger did it.

Quit jerking off Radiohead’s ego.

http://www.janesiberry.com/index2.html

Yes! But here’s the difference. If all record companies have to offer is marketing muscle then why do they need to own and/or make so much profit off these songs themselves? Why do they need to own the masters? Short answer: they don’t. Record Labels will be replaced by smart, powerful, marketing companies whose taste in bands they represent will booster their reputation (just like what happens with record labels). Certain marketing companies will rise to the top and become “hot.” The other side of the coin is distribution companies. With a marketing company and a distribution company under their belt a band has little need for a record company. If we could only all be little flies on the walls of major record company board rooms today!

Radiohead might not be the best example of what you’re trying to argue, as they’ve been able to consistently hold onto and grow their devoted fan base since “Creep”/Pablo Honey came out. They’re more like Bob Dylan, or Muddy Waters, or the Stones, I think, in the sense that they could record themselves reading the phone book, and there are (a lot of) people who would buy it. I think it’s likely that artists like this would eventually emerge from the mass of musicmakers and achieve some measure of fame and riches. Whether it’s as much as was able to be amassed in the long heyday of the major record labels, that I can’t tell you.

I think a better question here is: with the seeming impending demise of the record industry, would it be possible for a highly-packaged pop star to even partially dominate the music scene? To put a name on it, is another Britney Spears going to be possible in a few years? I’m hoping not. Not that disposable music isn’t going to continue to be produced, marketed and sold, but I do hope it’s no longer the baseline.

Ten years ago, I remember friends would buy everything that came out on Thrill Jockey because they knew that the label wouldn’t sign something that they wouldn’t like. It’s maybe like an art gallery knowing their regular customers, and looking for artists that would sell to them. Having a coterie of similar artists and selling records on that reputation didn’t sound like a bad business model then, and it only sounds like a better idea now.

Hello Everyone!

I wanted you to hear about this from me first. The Sheeba store has a new pricing policy.

Like many, I feel restless and impatient with living in a world where people are made to feel like shoplifters rather than intelligent peoples with a good sense of balance. I want to treat people the way I’d like to be treated. ‘Dumbing UP’ (as opposed to ‘dumbing down’).

WHAT ARE SELF-DETERMINED TRANSACTIONS?
NOT donations
NOT pay-what-you-can
NOT guilt-trips
NOT tests of your integrity
ARE trans-actions

You decide what feels right to your gut. If you download for free, perhaps you’ll buy an extra CD at an indie band’s concert. Or if you don’t go with your gut feeling, you might sleep poorly, wake up grumpy, put your shoes on backwards and fall over. Whatever. You’ll know what to do.

WHAT YOU WILL FIND AT SHEEBA STORE
FOUR choices on pop-down ‘buy’ button

1. free (gift from Jane)
2. self-determined (pay now)
3. self-determined (pay later so you are truly educated in your decision)
4. standard (today’s going rate is about .99)

Pricing Statistics
% Gift from Artist 19%
% Standard 18%
% Pay Now 5%
% Pay Later 57%

Avg Price/Song
$1.18
% Paid Below Suggested 6%
% Paid At Suggested 80%
% Paid Above Suggested 14%

More importantly though, I hope there’s a future for this model in the market at large. This is an easy (and, yes, somewhat gimmicky) route for Radiohead to take at this point in their careers, since they already have an enormous, loyal fan base. But the real question is whether a group of unknowns with great music but no backing from the industry publicity machine could reach Radiohead’s popularity based solely on home-spun marketing and online donations (aka “sales”).

The RIAA are a bunch of thugs, but they still play a real role in laying down the “venture capital” that can turn lesser-known talents into “stars.” They used to play an essential role in music distribution as well, but of course the ‘net made short work of that.

Once artists can pay for their own production and promotion using funds from fan loyalty alone, they’ll be able to cut out the middlemen altogether. Will getting there be easy? Of course not, but you’d better believe that it would give artists far more “control” than they currently have.

The Crimea (ex-Warners signed) released their whole second album for free, non-DRM MP3 download with cover art on their website back in May, prefering other revenue streams such as show tickets and merch to tide them over. I’m a big fan of them and, having been to a few shows before & after the release, I’d say it deffinately worked; attendance must’ve increased 5 times. They eventually release the album on CD for purchase a few months later.

Ash, uncer the same management of The Crimea, then announced they’d no longer be releasing albums and sticking with single releases. No freebies though.

And then Prince, as you probably know, gave his album away to gig attendees and tabloid readers. Again, he’ll also be selling the thing at a later date.

So no one yet has bothered to stop selling recorded music all together…

Hmmmm … that might be Prince. Or Reznor. Selling your CD online is … what, 5 years old? Putting tracks online to remix — with prizes for the peer-elected winners — now *that* was rad.

The “industry” was always great at marketing. Alas, they were also in the position of deciding what was “good enough” to market. They became the status quo, and their choices defended that. The more consolidation, the more drivel. But then hey, that’s History.

And the bigger they got (sort of like Apple), the more they cozied up with The Man. (Want to sell censored tracks? No problem. Hey, c’mon to the barbecue this weekend.)

That period is over. How sweet it is.

I’m sorry, but this just reeks of arrogance on Radiohead’s part. I commend them for standing up to the labels, but the pricey boxset is rather hypocritical.

But $80 for the actual physical product? — I don’t understand people simultaneously smirking about saying ‘goodbye’ to the CD, and happily plunking down so much cash for…the CDs (plus vinyl, I know, I know, but that still isn’t any excuse). Fans will always want the limited edition product, but I think that this move with the uber-expensive discbox says something else: some bands are ARTISTS, and others aren’t. I have serious doubts that other lesser-known bands would dare offer such an item in an all-Internet music purchasing world, or if they did, that they could get away with it.

Do I think it’s cool? Sure. But I didn’t ever imagine that taking the piss from the record companies would so quickly be replaced by a commodity fetishism whose cost makes CDs look like a good deal to me.

That said, according to the website Radiohead apparently are also going to release the music as a regular CD, too, for all the regular Joes and Janes out here.

They have a dozen or so Seattle area indy artists using the site, and so far it is working great – It’s called songslide – I don’t know if BB allows urls, but if they do, it is (naturally) http://www.songslide.com/

For those who want a full analysis of this offering I have consolidated all the details in this analysis at http://www.music2dot0.com/archives/47

The download page suggests that you will be given a code to ‘unlock’ the tracks after the release date… how is the unlocking done, precisely? A custom windows-only thing? An encrypted zip? via Plays-for-Sureâ„¢ ? – bleugh.

I’m all confused.

Also, if I choose to pay money for the MP3s, am I doing so in British Pounds? Should I probably expect to get charged a currency exchange fee from my credit card? Eh? Boo complications.