From memory Radiohead and NIN have both offered albums, available online where you can pay what you want for them, and both walked away with over $1million.
Unless there's some crazy contract shenanigans going on, I really don't see why some of the bigger artists don't pull a Valve and create their own content delivery platform that is fair for the artist, fair for the consumer and criticism free.
I can't remember how much I paid for "In Rainbows", but it was definitely more than the usual album price (for much the same reasons you paid over the odds).
I didn't really like the album that much (no offence to anyone who did), but because I could pay whatever I wanted, I think I tossed $5 their way just because I liked the whole concept, and felt like they deserved a little bit. Just like I bought that AFI album [wikipedia.org] many years back, because it only $7 at the time, which I thought was probably what most CDs should cost. I'm much more interested in paying for a subscription type service to music, like RDIO or Spotify, where they have a much bigger collection then
By which I mean to say that endeavors that start like this wind up being "captured" over time by industry managers anyway. To keep that from happening you'd need some kind of clever artist-ownership arrangement, maybe a bit like the Vanguard Group or TIAA-CREF.
From memory Radiohead and NIN have both offered albums, available online where you can pay what you want for them, and both walked away with over $1million.
For a professionally produced album, I would imagine that the production costs are in the several hundreds of thousands of dollars and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the big name artists spend over $1 million producing an album.
This is true, but it doesn't have to be true. It is true because the big labels run their own studios and can "charge" whatever they want. If one wanted to, they could use an independent studio and create an album just as good in the 10's of thousands range.
Sure, but in the case of the two mentioned, the members of Radiohead and Trent Reznor are all pretty adept at studio work, so there's a lot less spent hiring sound guys, producers, etc, when you can do it yourself. If you've got the money (which they do), then time/labor isn't really an issue either since you can rely on saved cash to get by while you do it your way. Not saying this will always be the case, but generally, if you can do it yourself at a fraction of the cost you would face going through an agency, you'd probably walk off in the black no problem (assuming too that your music is good and you can find a fanbase).
Keep in mind the fact that Radiohead said that they won't repeat that, which makes me wonder how successful it really was.
Radiohead won't repeat 'In Rainbows' giveaway
"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," the band's lead singer Thom Yorke told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was
Seen on a button at an SF Convention:
Veteran of the Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force. 1990-1951.
Reward the artist (Score:5, Insightful)
Reward the artist by going to see a show and buying some merch. Nothing else really gets back to them in any significant amounts.
This is what you get when you mess with us (Score:2)
Re:This is what you get when you mess with us (Score:5, Interesting)
From memory Radiohead and NIN have both offered albums, available online where you can pay what you want for them, and both walked away with over $1million.
Unless there's some crazy contract shenanigans going on, I really don't see why some of the bigger artists don't pull a Valve and create their own content delivery platform that is fair for the artist, fair for the consumer and criticism free.
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Ditto, great album. King of Limbs was just as good if not better.
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Re:This is what you get when you mess with us (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:This is what you get when you mess with us (Score:5, Interesting)
Like United Artists Corporation [wikipedia.org], now part of MGM.
By which I mean to say that endeavors that start like this wind up being "captured" over time by industry managers anyway. To keep that from happening you'd need some kind of clever artist-ownership arrangement, maybe a bit like the Vanguard Group or TIAA-CREF.
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For a professionally produced album, I would imagine that the production costs are in the several hundreds of thousands of dollars and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the big name artists spend over $1 million producing an album.
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Re:This is what you get when you mess with us (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, but in the case of the two mentioned, the members of Radiohead and Trent Reznor are all pretty adept at studio work, so there's a lot less spent hiring sound guys, producers, etc, when you can do it yourself. If you've got the money (which they do), then time/labor isn't really an issue either since you can rely on saved cash to get by while you do it your way. Not saying this will always be the case, but generally, if you can do it yourself at a fraction of the cost you would face going through an agency, you'd probably walk off in the black no problem (assuming too that your music is good and you can find a fanbase).
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