New Radiohead Album, Legalizing Musical Marijuana, and the Impact on the Industry
Yes, I know every blogger in the universe is talking about Radiohead’s new album, but it’s really impossible to ignore what the band is about to do for the music industry, especially for those artists who are unsigned. If you’ve been living under a rock, Radiohead is about to release their seventh LP, In Rainbows, without a record label. The album will be available DRM-free online, at a price that you determine. I thought about doing a “feature” on Radiohead as a label-less band about to drop an album, but figured that this little meditation on the subject would suffice.
Anyone with even a loose tie to the industry knows that illegal downloading of music is undoubtedly the biggest problem facing music today, and that no good solution has been in sight for a while. Audiophiles, like yours truly, would never be able to afford the music collections they have without sharing, downloading, and swapping, and while record labels can shut down peer to peer clients and sue as many stoned college kids as they’d like to, the practice of sharing music is tattooed deep below our culture’s skin.
With this in mind, Radiohead has offered to put art in the hands of people, hoping with a bona fide John Locke mentality that people will do the right thing and support the artist. The two main questions that Radiohead is asking: if something is no longer illegal, does it make it less intriguing to partake in, and does putting the value of art in the hands of the consumer allow a feasible economy for artists to create in?
My answer to the first question is not a definite yes, but a definite step in the right direction. This is undoubtedly all very well for a band with no financial troubles, but how does this translate to the unsigned artist? Although this strategy initially seems like financial ruin for the starving unsigned artist, I’d like to make a case for the contrary.
Sooner or later, everyone is going to download music, so why not get ahead of the game? I understand that the idea of “donating” to artists may be unappealing, but this is really not the case. What Radiohead is doing is asking the consumer to put worth on a piece, much in the same way bidding takes place at an art auction. If you have a soul, you’ve bought records from artists and gone to their shows to support them even after you downloaded their album, so why not cut out the extra step? If people like the work, they’ll support it, and this is what Radiohead is hoping to prove.
I’m not surprised that a band as innovative as Radiohead decided to set this whole thing in action, but I am surprised that it took this long. So I encourage you, consumers and creators, to download the album and pay what you think it’s worth, and moreover, to do the same for your own work.
I’ll leave you with a live video of “Nude” (a.k.a. “Big Ideas”), recorded live in Amsterdam and soon to be released on In Rainbows. Enjoy.
