What Do We Reckoner? (Conclusions)

The ultimate question: was Radiohead's "pay what you want" model for releasing In Rainbows successful? We have heard many different opinions which I will try to (and hopefully with some success) make sense of. [A heads up: this post in particular is opinion driven and will not contain as many sources as in previous posts]

This was brought up by Radiohead themselves and is one of the main reasons they chose to self-release In Rainbows. The band and many others contend that the "pay what you want" was about taking power away from record companies and critics and giving it to artists and their fans. Opponents of this argument say that the majority of people torrented In Rainbows anyway and, unless bands work with their record labels, they will never have complete control over their music.

I'm sure anyone reading this blog knows that Radiohead is one of the most popular bands in the world today. This issue, which draws on the issue of the artist's control over his/her work, has to do with how well established the artist already is in the industry. Some say that the "pay what you want" model is good for artists who have not made it yet because it allows for people to hear their music, who ordinarily wouldn't. Others, like Will Hodgkinson, say that the "pay what you want" model ultimately hurts emerging musicians because the model devalues music and makes it nearly impossible for musicians to make a living.

Okay, opinion time. Personally, I feel that nothing will "devalue" music. It is too important to us as human beings. In fact, I find this whole idea of valuing music with money somewhat perverse. In that respect, I find Radiohead's attempt to democratize their music incredibly noble, while at the same time, I am uncomfortable with "name your own price as a means of determining the quality of music. Ultimately, I take Radiohead's side, who have said that they will probably not repeat this method of releasing music ever again.

I agree that, for emerging artists, the "pay what you want" option will not work, as does Radiohead. They have denied that this is a revolutionary move on their part to change the music industry forever. As I said in my first post, the band see the method of release as a part of creativity of the album. Radiohead have always released their albums in wacky ways (OK Computer was released to reviewers as a tape inside a glued shut tape player so that they couldn't skip any songs on the album. Kid A was released without any music videos (there were the blips, of course) or singles) and "pay what you want" should not be seen as a viable method for other musicians that are poles apart.

However, the issue still remains: was Radiohead's use of the "pay what you want" model successful? In my opinion, the answer is obviously yes. Radiohead profited greatly from this release model because they created a lot hype on the internet. Their dedicated fans supplied them with enough revenue to make the project financially viable and their new album was shared online (I swear I am not making this up) 2.3 million times.

Unfortunately, Radiohead is just too extraordinary an example to determine whether pay what you want is a viable option for the music industry in general. I still say no, as does Radiohead, Paul McGuinness, Robert Smith, and Trent Reznor. Nonetheless, no one can deny that Radiohead's gamble payed off in the end.

Thanks to anyone who took time to read my ramblings. Comments are open for anyone who'd like to continue the discussion. What are your thoughts on PWYW? Do you see Radiohead's In Rainbows experiment as a success?

In Black or In Red? In Rainbows! (or; The Yeasayers)

We have seen many different opinions about Radiohead's "pay what you want" option, implemented by the band for their 2007 album In Rainbows. Bono thought it was brave, Trent Reznor thought it was insincere. Now we finally look at how successful Radiohead's self-released album was in retrospect six years later.


One thing we can say for sure is: In Rainbows was extremely popular. There are a number of possibilities for this. First of all, In Rainbows was generally considered to be a better album than its predecessor Hail to the Thief, which even the band complained was not as polished as their other albums. This may be why, as NME reported, "it [In Rainbows...] generated more money before it was physically released (on December 31) than the total money generated by sales of the band's previous album, 2003's Hail To The Thief".

Given the exceptional circumstances of the release of In Rainbows, we can probably go further than "it was a good album". Steve Gottlieb, the president of TVT Records, said in TIME Magazine (which I'm re-quoting from vulture.com):

"To the extent Radiohead still has a significant audience in its 30s and 40s, there's a bigger audience of those people who will still pick up something at Best Buy or don't want to bother with figuring out how to go to a Radiohead Website and track it down."

Indeed it may be possible that Radiohead's use of the internet was too early for its time. One should remember that Radiohead began their career in the late eighties, so it's entirely possible that many of their fans are not as comfortable using new digital technology or social media. However, a background in Radiohead's history will prove this more unlikely than one might think at first. Since the late nineties, Radiohead have a had a large presence online. The band has had complete control over their website radiohead.com since its inception and has used it as a means of communicating directly with their fans (Radiohead keep an archive of their old websites here). Another option suggested in the Vulture article is that many fans wanted "a physical, archival high-fidelity master recording". This ties into an idea discussed in the previous post, that people who want more content will pay more money. As can be seen from the picture below, In Rainbows was not just released as a digital download.

This is a picture of the limited edition "discbox" of In Rainbows which was released along with a regular CD months after the "pay what you want" experiment. While the majority of people downloaded the album from torrents, a strong minority opted to pay for the physical version of the album, for aesthetics or just for familiarity and ease of use. Contrary to what everybody in the music industry thought, Radiohead proved that fans were, under some circumstances, willing to pay more for music.



The advert above shows Radiohead's interest in do-it-yourself culture.

So what happened exactly? Radiohead's 2007 record sold less than their previous ones, but made more money than all of them combined. In the next post we will try to draw a conclusion as to whether Radiohead's "pay what you want" experiment ultimately payed off.

The Naysayers

Radiohead's use of the "pay what you want" model drew the attention of everyone in the music industry. While much of the response was positive, others were critical of Radiohead's approach and pondered the implications of consumers naming their own price. Today we'll look at some of the naysayers who expressed their concerns about Radiohead's new direction.

Few bands have garnered as much critical praise and commercial success as Radiohead have. So it is important to ask why the (now former) manager of U2, Radiohead's contemporary in terms of popularity, said Radiohead's "pay what you want" model "backfired". On BBC Radio 6, U2's manager Paul McGuinness said:

Sixty to 70% of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway [meaning they downloaded it from torrent sites not Radiohead's website], even though it was available for free [paying nothing was an acceptable option].

McGuinness is pictured here with U2's lead singer Bono, who released a statement to NME clarifying the band's view of Radiohead and "pay what you want".

McGuinness is correct, and Radiohead have acknowledged that, even though fans had the opportunity to download the album for free, the majority of people still downloaded it through illegal means such as torrents. Whether this means that the "pay what you want" method failed for Radiohead is still up for debate. McGuinness' argument goes back to the idea of artists having control over their work, an argument with which The Cure's frontman Robert Smith wholeheartedly agrees.

You can't allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don't consider what you do to have any value at all and that's nonsense. If I put a value on my music and no one's prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can't work.

Smith is of the opinion that power is taken away from the artist if someone else is able to determine what his or her work is worth. Smith's idea is an interesting contrast with Radiohead's. idea that "pay what you want" empowers the artist and the consumer.

It should be noted that Radiohead, U2 and The Cure are relatively successful bands, and the issues brought up so far concern established musicians. But what about bands that are just starting out? Will Hodgkinson from The Guardian wrote an opinion piece about how the "pay what you want" model might negatively affect new artists that seek to make a living as musicians. Concerning the negative side-effects on his own label, Big Bertha Records, Hodgkinson writes "if everyone expects to hear this album [Rosemarie by Thistletown] as a free download, there is of course no chance of it ever making a profit." Hodgkinson claims that if fans are allowed to assign monetary value to music, popular bands will profit while musicians that are not yet well established will be left in the dust. Again, this is the idea that a musician has to have control over every aspect of their work if they are going to make a living as an artist.

Our last naysayer is Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor who, in an interview with the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), said:

I think the way [Radiohead] parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd. But if you look at what they did, it was very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.

Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV

A short time after Radiohead released In Rainbows, Nine Inch Nails released their album Ghosts I-IV in a similar manner, but with a few key differences. The Ghosts I-IV album was available as "pay what you want" but the content the customer was given was determined by how much he or she payed. If the customer payed nothing, they would be able to listen to certain tracks on the album. If they payed $5, they could download the entire album. As the amount of money the listener was willing to pay went up, the more they received, including "downloads, discs, and varying merchandise". Here, we can see that Reznor offers McGuinness, Smith and Hodgkinson a solution. Instead of a pricing free-for-all, the amount someone is willing to pay determines what content they will get. Not passing judgments just yet, this model now seems to be the go-to model for the modern music industry, including Radiohead themselves (In Rainbows was later released as a physical CD and a special edition 2 CD set).

In the next post we'll look at some of the actual numbers and explore just how successful Radiohead's "pay what you want" model really was.

From the Horse's Mouth

In 2007, the English rock band Radiohead released their 7th studio album In Rainbows. Up to that point, Radiohead had released all their records, from Pablo Honey in 1993 to Hail to the Thief in 2003, through their label EMI. During this time, Radiohead had established themselves as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed bands of all time.

But when it came time to release their next album, Radiohead decided to end their relationship with EMI and release their new record themselves. In Rainbows was released as a digital download on radiohead.com with a "name your own price" option. It was acceptable to pay nothing for the album.

As Marvin Lin, in the book he wrote on Radiohead's Kid A for the 33⅓ series, put it: "In one dramatic yet understated gesture, Radiohead [...] formulated a release method that had the entire music community suddenly reassessing the relationships among music, value, and consumption." (Lin, 114-115)


Indeed, Radiohead may have changed the music industry, but to start our case study, let's look at what the band's intentions were. In a very McLuhan-esque way, the members of Radiohead argued that the way in which they released In Rainbows was an essential part of the album. In the video above, guitarist Ed O'Brien talks about how self releasing In Rainbows was empowering for the band and for fans. In an interview with Wired magazine, lead singer Thom Yorke vocalizes a similar feeling. Talking about how record labels promote artists ad nauseum, hoping their album will do good in the charts :

“That's what major labels do, yeah. But it does us no good, because we don't cross over [to other fan bases]. The main thing was, there's all this bollocks [with the media]. We were trying to avoid that whole game of who gets in first with the reviews. These days there's so much paper to fill, or digital paper to fill, that whoever writes the first few things gets cut and pasted. Whoever gets their opinion in first has all that power. Especially for a band like ours, it's totally the luck of the draw whether that person is into us or not. It just seems wildly unfair, I think.”

It is clear Radiohead are for the democratization of music. When the album was released, Radiohead also released the "stems" (the individual instrument tracks) from two songs from In Rainbows for fans to do with it whatever they chose. Fans could upload their remixes to radioheadremix.com and rate other people's creations.

To the members of Radiohead, self releasing is not just a creative choice, it is an essential step in making a direct connection between the artist and their fans (as well as potential fans). In their eyes, the "pay what you want" model is about empowering the artist and the listener, not the record label and critics. In the next post, we'll be looking at the response of others in the music industry and some counter arguments to the "pay what you want" model.