On October 10, thousands of people logged onto the website www.inrainbows.com to download Radiohead’s latest album. The fact that the band officially announced the release mere days in advance was a shock to many. That the download would cost whatever you wanted, however, seemed absolutely mind-boggling to some.
The novel idea (customers can pay as little as nothing if they are so inclined) has sparked debate over the future of the music industry, with many starting to subscribe to the idea that the clock is ticking for behemoth record companies like Sony and BMG.
This is a knee-jerk reaction. Reports suggest the average downloader is paying between five to eight dollars to download “In Rainbows”. This is a veritable steal considering most digital downloads from stores like iTunes cost one dollar a track (there are 10 on the album), and CD’s are often priced well into the double digits.
Well, it would be a veritable steal. That is, if it wasn’t available for free. People have asked me why I didn't pay anything for "In Rainbows," or if I feel guilty for doing so. I pondered that question myself as I entered nill into the donation bin of rock.
After all -- this is a social experiment. It’s a question of what the experience of music is worth to us personally, on an emotional and economical level. Blah blah blah.
What "In Rainbows" should really be seen as is a sample survey on how fiscally responsible we are.
If you take a pragmatic look at the situation, the idea that Radiohead should be hailed as some sort of musical Che Guerra is absurd. People were going to download their album for free anyways, through Bit Torrent and other piracy venues. In fact, I would wager that the very same people who were going to steal it are now the ones paying nominal prices for an inferior version of the album.
What the band has done is basically just ask their fans to donate money. For nothing. Every cent that goes toward the digital download of "In Rainbows" is money Radiohead would never have seen had they only released a CD version.
People willing to buy the album will still buy it – they want something tangible. For everyone else, however, who otherwise would have downloaded the album illegally but not necessarily purchased it, this is an unexpected expense. People have been programmed as consumers to pay for a service. It’s not surprising that many would feel bad for actually having to type "nothing" into a donation box.
Downloading from some faceless peer-to-peer site is easy. “Stealing” directly from the source seems somewhat more difficult and guilt inducing. And so, small numerical values start being entered by downloaders into the “how much will you pay” box, all the while rationalizing it by telling themselves how little they are paying for an album. But you know what’s cheaper than one or two? Zero.
The band that created arguably the greatest rock album of the past 20 years in “OK Computer” have taken hundreds of music fans (and probably more than a handful of college students) and essentially shaken them down for their lunch money.
Not everyone may have thought hearing Paranoid Android was a seminal point in their lives, but somehow Radiohead have guilt tripped music pirates into paying for music – and incredibly, convinced them to do so happily. If that doesn’t prove the band is a foursome of musical geniuses, I frankly do not know what will.
To be fair, “In Rainbows” is a gorgeous album (yes, there is actually music involved in all this), with sweeping melodies and a driving rhythm section that somehow have made an album that does nothing crazy, and sounds perfect within its familiarity. In short, it is so un-Radiohead avant-garde it actually is Radiohead avant-garde (like that episode of South Park where a goth kid decides he is so goth, he's going to be conformist instead of non-conformist). I will probably buy the CD when it comes out, just to hear Reckoner in better quality.
However, Thom Yorke lives in a giant house, while I just ate ramen noodles for dinner again.
So no, the answer is I don’t feel bad for downloading “In Rainbows” for nothing. And neither should you.
1 comment:
genius!
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