How much will you pay for open-source Radiohead?
Radiohead is making its next album free...or whatever you want to pay.
(Credit:
Kate Geraghty)
I just pre-paid $20 for the newest Radiohead album (available on October 10). Radiohead, now without a label/ball and chain, has decided to let its fans choose how much to pay the company. I'm actually feeling cheap right now, even though I'd pay $10.00 or less on iTunes (if Radiohead sold through iTunes, which it doesn't, because of a somewhat silly "artistic integrity" argument).
How much will you pay? It's nice to think of all the money going to Thom and crew, rather than to a Larry in a lounge suit somewhere in Los Angeles. Just as I'd prefer to pay Marten Mickos for my database than Larry Ellison. :-) But that's not the only open-source analog here.
This model arguably works much better for an established brand like Radiohead. It's not too dissimilar from how open source has fared in software: traditional markets are much more susceptible to open source than new markets because it becomes much cheaper to market an open-source application, for example, when everyone already knows what the product does.
At any rate, download and/or pay here. Just as if it were open-source software. Except that this will sound a lot better.
