Why Pay for Free Music?

Trent Reznor himself questioned the viability of the 'free' music model earlier this year, but clearly, his own band has been able to make it work. While overall album sales were down last year (even when accounting for digital downloads), bands like the Nine Inch Nails have been able to leverage their fanbase and bypass the traditional music industry channels, while still making a profit.

On the Creative Commons blog, Fred Benenson asks why people chose to pay for the NIN album even though they could have had it for free. While, as he points out, ease of use is surely one reason, most fans probably simply want to support their favorite musicians by actually paying them directly for their music.

"According to our poll US$5-9 is the most popular price range that people are willing to pay for the digital download version. That pricing will be virtually all profit to Radiohead, so the download version will make some money for the band," he wrote. "However the eventual single CD release will reach a much wider audience, so the physical CD will end up being the pot of gold at the end of In Rainbows."

The latest UK album charts have In Rainbows sitting pretty at #1. Because the Internet download version is no longer available, it is clear that Radiohead's main goal for the gimmick was to promote the planned CD release of their album. It would appear they were successful in that regard, but appearances can be deceiving. To be fair, it is way too early to tell what effect the In Rainbows online promotion had on the band's CD sales, so what follows is purely hypothetical.

It was certainly not hard for Richard to predict that a CD release for Radiohead would be a "pot of gold." The band's last 4 albums have reached #1 in the UK, and none of the bands albums have thus far failed to go platinum there. Even in the US, where the band's popularity has cooled since the late 90s, a gold record is nearly guaranteed for Radiohead. So Internet promotion or no, a hot selling CD was in the cards for Thom Yorke and company.

What we don't know yet, is how In Rainbows CD sales will compare with the band's past albums. Could it be that by offering essentially a prerelease of the album online, the band cannibalized future CD sales? Did the eventual cancellation of the download promotion and release of a traditional CD alienate early-adopters and cause them not to want to buy the album? Or did instead the Internet release merely attract casual fans who would not likely have purchase the CD anyway? These are all interesting questions, but it is still to early to form any definitive conclusions from Radiohead's experiment.