Gno Schitt

I currently pre-order it for $0 with the intent that once I listen to it, I will decide how awesome it is, and the buy it again for more to support the band, and this means of album distribution.

This seems like booking a car rental and then telling Budget how much you a going to pay based on how awesome you thought your trip was. Or buying a book, reading it, photocopying it, and then returning it because you didn't care for how awesome it was.

The band isn't distributing the music for free, and it isn't calling the album "shareware" - so I don't think it should be treated that way.

While I agree with your statements, I think theres a little more detail than that. It's like making a reservation with the car rental place for a vehicle, then paying a varying amount after finding out if you got a luxury car, or a 10 year old beater. This is an honour based system, where I am fully intending to pay something, no matter what the album is like. I'd rather run just the 1 transaction on my card than run one for the minimum amount I'll pay (say $1, to cover their server costs, and support the I thikn better business model) then a second transaction after determining I like the album thus should give them more money.

A solution to that "problem" would be if they had say 15-20 second clips of at least a couple songs off the album available for streaming, so I could hear what it's going to be like.

Say it's an independant groups first album, they can tag themselves as a rock band. How would I decide how much to pay for their first album with no knowledge other than their name, and their catergorization of "Rock"?

A couple days ago when I first heard this scheme I decided I would probably buy the album simply to support this model. It may have some issues that need to be worked out yet but its sure a nice change from the crap the music industry has tried to shove down our throats lately.

I would love to see the stats that get generated by this.

Ok.
A couple of things spring to mind here. I'm just going to state some facts, and then get into it.

1. I recently realized that the habit of downloading movies, even very high quality movies, has reduced my desire to watch them to the point that I have a stack of 6 to 10 waiting at home that I have not touched.

2. Most of the music I have downloaded, avoiding regular channels, I listen to a lot - but would never have paid going CD rate for (the rare stuff that I like, is often more than $25 a CD)

3. Music that I have posted for download on ccMixter I have never gained a cent for, and if I had placed an option for people to donate, I probably would NOT have received much - if any - income from that.

4. I have recently decided to see if I CAN get money per track by testing this new BroadJam service. So far, no bites, for what is a pretty well constructed techno track, easily the match for the likes of tracks from BeatPort.com and eMusic.com

5. If I was charging for ALL of my tracks, I would still have almost no money to show for it AND nobody would have listened to it.

6. I have recently decided that if I want to support a band (and my local economy) I should go to the locally produced events and purchase merchandise to support them.


Okay.

First of all, I think the observation about the movies bit serves to illustrate that movies and music are substantially different enough to be treated separately in the discussion, so I won't come back to them.

With the music, I think we should should return our focus back to getting musicians to perform for their money. Tour, meet fans, get involved with people. Roadies, techs, etc...

As somebody who has performed (and been paid to do it) it seems to me that all the album / distribution / royalties nonsense is a byproduct of the fact that musicians, by and large, are not performers anymore.

Evidence of this fact is laid bare to see when you see criticisms of Britney Spears' latest foibles on MTV's live show:

"Her lip syncing performance was tired and lacked energy; she didn't connect" (my emphasis)

Excuse me? Lip Sync Performance?
We have sunken so low in our expectations of artists that now the quality of the lip sync is the issue.

I think it's about damn time they move to this sort of format. The music SHOULD be free. It is the advertising tool to entice me to buy other related merchandise or to attend a live show, which is the REAL value.

The prestige (and necessity) of expensive studios for production is slowly being eroded by the high technical quality of local entrepreneurs and affordable digital studios across the country - a more distributed model of production if you will.

So, I think this is the first step towards abandoning the old and broken corporate model that has grown into a monster around us, in favor of something more decentralized, lightweight, and ultimately more satisfying - brave new horizons. Does this mean the death of the "superstar"? Probably, no... HOPEFULLY.

In this vein, I saw Days of the New last night, and they delivered. I'm going to see Ozzy/Zombie on Oct 24th, and then Tool in late November. Plus I've got a DJ gig in early November and another Rock/Metal show to attend that Terry is putting on that month too.

I'm going to be busy. Busy sinking money into my favorite artists and local shows that I wouldn't have if I paid the outrageous gouging prices asked by corrupt A&R clowns.

Well the release date for this album has come.
I was forced to get it for free from a torrent this morning. The radiohead website was down. Thus maybe making this one of the fastest album sell-outs of all time?
Shows how new / unexpected this technique is. Someone forgot to talk to some larger network to figure out how much load their servers would be under...
Although I'm now about 1/2 way through the album. I must say, I'm quite enjoying it. I will be paying a reasonable price once the website is back up to let me.

Yeah, and that's the way it should be. If you have a chance to go see them live, do.

That's my two cents.