it's up to you

IT'S UP TO YOU

That's the message you get when you click the '?' next to the price textbox when ordering Radiohead's latest album In Rainbows. It was actually the most interesting decision I made today. When I first heard about Radiohead selling a full download of their album for a price you choose I didn't think too much about it, Magnatune's been doing this for their entire existence as far as I know. For some reason buying this from Radiohead seemed a little different than the relatively unknown artists at Magnatunes.

I was unsure what to pay for the album... I haven't heard it yet (except for bits and pieces at Zulu records the other day). So I decided to be, what I considered generous, and paid $10 CAD for it. I think this is pretty generous for the following reasons:

1. The tracks are available only as MP3 download. I would prefer something like FLAC so that I can convert it to any format I want down the road without loss of quality.
2. You don't get a physical disk with the download... though, my cd's mostly sit in a box in my closet anyway. There's the whole backup issue.
3. There's no overhead for the label (as Parveen pointed out)

I'm pretty interested to see if this method pans out and other larger bands start following in their footsteps. I'd be very curious to see the purchase breakdown stats for the album. How many people purchased it for 1 British cent? How many paid the maximum 99.99 pounds for the download?

Another interesting thing I noticed when registering for the site... the registration form requires you to enter your mobile phone number, whereas landline is optional. What does it all mean!?

As far as the quality of the music on the album... I don't know yet, I'm only on the first track right now. Maybe I'll let you know later tonight.