How much do you want to pay?
The british rock band Radiohead is one of the most acclaimed bands by the international critics since the 90’s. After their 2003 album, Hail To The Thief, they ended their contract with the music label EMI and spent more than 4 years to release new material. In 2007, they announced that they were going to release a new album, called “ In Rainbows”, by theirselves and through the internet, without any labels involved. That created a big buzz and anticipation on the media, but no one was expecting what they had in mind for the release.
Only ten days after the announcement, anyone could buy In Rainbows through Radiohead’s official site, in the MP3 format. The surprise was in the payment area of the site. There was a blank field for the user to type, under the title of “You tell us how much it’s worth”. The user could pay whatever it wanted to pay, with credit card, including ZERO pounds.
This was a bold movement by one of the biggest bands in the world, and got different reactions. The press took it as a turn point in the
music business, so that labels and record retailers were afraid of the idea of going out of business. Some said it wasn’t fair to beginer artists,
that still relay on record sales. The fact is that, it was a distinctive and innovative distribution strategy, and a brilliant marketing play, and two years after, others have tried similar things as well.
The numbers didn’t come to public, but Radiohead’s manager says that, even though one third of the people who download it paid nothing, In Rainbows was more profitable than the band’s previous release, and the average price paid was 4 pounds (approximately 13 reais).
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