Just as a point of interest, Radiohead’s use of the ‘choose your own price’ model was NOT the first, I know of at least one artist that was doing it for a while before them: Canada’s Jane Sibbery, via her indie label Sheeba Records. The store now seems to be closed but I remember being impressed with the concept and then a couple of years later when Radiohead did it, obviously on a much larger scale, remembering that I’d seen it before. Sheeba even had a little graph section that showed what people chose to pay – you could get it for free, as a ‘gift from the artist’, or pay whatever you wanted. There was a suggested price, and it’s a measure of her adoring fanbase that quite a few people chose to pay more.

Also, Magnatune.com is an online record company based around the same concept and have been doing it for some years as well. They now have a subscription model but it’s still pay-what-you-want, albeit starting at $10 a month. You can still get one-offs as well, but again there’s a minimum (and, oddly, a maximum!)…

Generally it seems clear that the price of recorded music is trending towards free and the people that are going to continue to do well are those that manage to find ancillary revenue streams that are driven by the music, rather than selling it per se. This transition will take time but it’s probably worth being on the front edge of it rather than left behind…

I’d say it’s more important to show bands how to do this stuff themselves (easily) than to tie them in to another platform that’s skimming %s off low-dollar purchases.

But hey, it’s not all bad. The community of people who are switched on to new models of music sales might turn out to be a good thing.