When it comes to give a price to music, it seems they are currently two kinds of artists, the ones who give away free download, even entire EPs or albums, and the ones who stick to the ancient model; you have the Radiohead-type who gave away ‘In Rainbows’ in 2007 for a pay-what-you-want offer – and that was a first at the time – and the Kiss’ Gene Simmons-type who declared the same year, ‘I open a store and say ‘Come on in and pay whatever you want’. Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?’
I totally understand musicians frustration, but Simmons’ attitude is certainly outdated, nobody can’t go back in time and follow his semi-fascist advise as in the same 2007 interview he declared that ‘every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning.’ He sounded disgusting, as always…
When I saw Trent Reznor talking with David Byrne about the music industry, he didn’t seem to be very found of this pay-what-you-want model, describing it as insulting as there’s gonna be people who will give a ridiculous amount like 50 cents, ‘Fuck that!’ he added angry. At the time he called Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want idea a stunt and ‘a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream’. But the problem is that many kids are not like purist Reznor, and don’t care that much about the quality, I see it every day!
But, without using Simmons’ ridiculous language, Reznor said he hated the idea, as he posted on his website in 2009:
‘This is where you offer tracks or albums for a user-determined price. I hate this concept, and here’s why. Some have argued that giving music away free devalues music. I disagree. Asking people what they think music is worth devalues music. Don’t believe me? Write and record something you really believe is great and release it to the public as a “pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth” model and then let’s talk. Read a BB entry from a “fan” rationalizing why your whole album is worth 50 cents because he only likes 5 songs on it. Trust me on this one – you will be disappointed, disheartened and find yourself resenting a faction of your audience. This is your art! This is your life! It has a value and you the artist are not putting that power in the hands of the audience – doing so creates a dangerous perception issue. If the FEE you are charging is zero, you are not empowering the fan to say this is only worth an insultingly low monetary value. Don’t be misled by Radiohead’s In Rainbows stunt. That works one time for one band once – and you are not Radiohead.’
He had a point, there is only one Radiohead, and this model cannot fit for small emerging bands, but is he right when he says that asking people what they think music is worth devalues music? In a way, we are doing that when we are reviewing an album, we may not give a price, but we tell others if they should spend money on it or not.
But if you go further, NIN is an established band, used to sell million of albums, and switching to this model would probably make them lose money, as people may suddenly be paying far less than they used to, with a fixed price. However, it’s totally different for emerging bands, isn’t it why Bandcamp is so successful? Usually you are offered to pay what you want on Bandcamp, with, it’s true, a minimum amount, around $1 per song. But I read that more than 40% of the costumers end up paying more. So this model may actually be a good one for unknown bands, as the money goes directly in their pocket and it is an attractive offer for people eager to discover new music.
So asking people what they want to pay is only devaluing music which has already a price on, the usual 15-20 bucks you used to pay for a CD, but may be doing just the reverse for unknown music from emerging bands.
And regarding ‘In Rainbows’, only 38% of people actually paid for downloading the album, 62% got it for free, meaning that the average price was around $2.26, according to NME. However Thom Yorke declared in 2007 that the band made more money out of the record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together! So they certainly weren't losers. And Trent Reznor? He said in an interview he paid $5,000 for 'In Rainbows' because he felt that he needed to support the arts… that was a great move, but how many of us can go that far!