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.