My apologies for sticking so tightly to this Radiohead thing, but every day it looks like a smarter, and better move for Radiohead – and my musician and label readers should be paying attention. Mind you, I say for Radiohead and I mean just that; Radiohead are going to end up winners here, and by “winners,” I mean from now on, they only eat 24ct. gold meat.
This article in the New York Magazine (pause to enjoy the irony of the Neiman Marcus ad on that page) that speculates on information given in the Radiohead’s confirmation email, coupled with the other bits that have emerged after the initial mushroom-cloud of “ZOMGZ! RADIOHEAD IS GIVING AWAY THEIR MUSIC!?!” died down has painted a fairly clear, and logical picture of what’s going on here.
Radiohead is using, get this, their music as advertising for their band. Whether they’re trying to sell CDs to you later, or themselves to EMI for more than EMI is actually worth these days; this pay-what-you-want pre-order effectively allowed Radiohead to get paid a couple million bucks (my best guess) for advertising their music, which, in turn, will make them even more millions later.
Again, look at the beauty and brilliance of it.
In the end, there will always need to be money going into music; to pay the talented artists, and the people who work very hard, and invest their own money to bring those artists to the top of the more-music-than-talent pile.
Radiohead has decided, and decided correctly, that they can charge you for something other than crappy 130kbps copies of their music.
As my father always said, the first reefer is always free.
I was thinking about stealing your “People Come Here For…” box because this week alone people ended up at Web Vomit while searching for:
“how to get vomit off walls”
“pissing vomit”
“blow job puke vomit”
“why would my child only throw up at night”
“straight drunk frat dudes”