SugarMyChurro
Posts: 1912
Joined: 4/26/2007
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That's music industry FUD.
A percentage is meaningless trivia. What was the actual take in dollars or British pounds so that we can better assess what happened?
There are so many other issues to consider too.
For starters, no one has ever claimed that a band made their money from the sale of music per se. Prior to this moment in time, the music industry itself always made sure to cook the books when it came to music royalties. If Radiohead made even from $0.10-1.00 USD per album download, then I think they broke even with industry expectations from the standpoint of what the band might earn per copy of a CD. A secondary issue here, is that music fans have always exchanged illicit or handmade copies of their favorite stuff for years. The mixtape is the perfect example of someone giving away someone else's music for free - and yes, the musicians nor the music industry ever received a thin dime for those endless mixtape cassettes. Once the music was published it was ripe for copyright infringing duplication. Everyone knows this fact.
It happens that I like a couple of Radiohead albums from the past, but I am far from some sycophantic fan that would declare every piece of output a masterpiece even if I had never heard it before. As it happens, I did download the Radiohead album for free but I haven't even had a chance to listen to it yet either because of actual time constraints or personal inclination. Let me repeat that: I haven't even heard the album yet! I doubt most downloaders had ever heard the album when they downloaded it either. The idea that I would pay for something "iffy" and unheard is ludicrous. Not gonna happen.
The internet is the new means of media distribution. Artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, poets, etc. will have to find a way to gain exposure for their work first. Certainly, they will have to give at least a taste of their work away in a kind of "try before you buy" manner before they can expect to reap any significant financial rewards from their output. In a sense, the internet is the new radio and the new television. For some it may be the end itself in the sense that a digital copy will do; but for others it is merely the way they wish to obtain their information about entertainment options in that they will sample something digitally and then go buy the actual product. In short, media distributed via the internet is a kind of advertising that ideally is out there to establish sales for something else that cannot be made available digitally. But let's stick to just a discussion of how this impacts the music scene...
Here is where it gets ticklish. What exactly is meant by "product"?
For the music industry, the now nearly useless middlemen, product has always meant CDs, singles, and videos. Those things are just the advertising and not necessarily the thing itself and that has always been the case. What is the thing itself? Well, for the band that has always been actual performance and ancillary support products like t-shirts, posters, stickers, and the like. That's how bands always made their money - by touring and sales of secondary product lines.
So what's left for the now largely useless music industry publishers? Well, that depends on your estimation of what something is actually worth in terms of real world or "hardcopy" media given that a digital copy is probably available for free on the internet. Personally, I'd say it looks like hard times are ahead for the publishers. Maybe they can eke out some profit by making extra deluxe CD packages available at a nominal price. I don't know and I barely care. Does anyone else recall this bit:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&hs=N4a&q=music+industry+price+fixing&btnG=Search
So the Radiohead story is far from over in terms of what must happen next in terms of whether their "experiment" with online distribution was a success or a failure. I doubt they will ever publish the numbers such that we shall ever know either way though.
< Message edited by SugarMyChurro -- 11/10/2007 11:27:18 AM >
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Most didn't pay for Radiohead album - 
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