From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V7 #230 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Wednesday, October 3 2007 Volume 07 : Number 230 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] Summer of 1973 [Scout82667@aol.com] [loud-fans] Radiohead and Bagels [glensarvad@aol.com] Re: [loud-fans] Radiohead's business model [Chris Prew ] Re: [loud-fans] Radiohead's business model ["Michael Zwirn" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Radiohead's business model There's a well-known anecdote in behavioral economics about this man in D.C. who brought bagels and muffins to work every day. He would just set them out and leave a basket there for people to put in money. At the time, there weren't really any cafes/caterers who would take daily deliveries like that, and he thought he could make a business out of it. So, he quit his job and started delivering baked goods to a lot of offices in the area. To collect the money, he put a sign asking for a 2 dollar payment that would go into a locked piggy bank. He didn't do well--IIRC, he only got about 50% payment on average. Then, he decided to take away the sign asking for 2 dollars, and just left the basket there for people to contribute as they saw fit. His revenues shot up dramatically. [Behavioral economists have repeated this kind of thing in experimental settings.] ________________________________________________________________________ Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - http://mail.aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 10:11:49 -0500 From: Chris Prew Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Radiohead's business model I think this is a great idea. Considering how little most artists make on the average CD sale (I've heard in the neighborhood of $1 to $2), I can't imagine they would make LESS money doing this than they would through conventional means. And the added benefit of total control over your product? Nice. Of course, the problem is obvious -- you can't break a new artist this way (i.e, how are you supposed to get the bagels if you don't know they are there?) But for an established artist I think this is a no-brainer. Chris P.S. There's this great new band on Emusic this week called the Loud Family. You should check them out. On Oct 2, 2007, at 1:01 AM, Michael Mitton wrote: > There's a well-known anecdote in behavioral economics about this man > in D.C. who brought bagels and muffins to work every day. He would > just set them out and leave a basket there for people to put in money. > At the time, there weren't really any cafes/caterers who would take > daily deliveries like that, and he thought he could make a business > out of it. So, he quit his job and started delivering baked goods to a > lot of offices in the area. To collect the money, he put a sign asking > for a 2 dollar payment that would go into a locked piggy bank. He > didn't do well--IIRC, he only got about 50% payment on average. Then, > he decided to take away the sign asking for 2 dollars, and just left > the basket there for people to contribute as they saw fit. His > revenues shot up dramatically. [Behavioral economists have repeated > this kind of thing in experimental settings.] > > I'm really excited to see how Radiohead's experiment works, and god > bless them for using their fame to try something new. Failure > shouldn't be measured by how many people choose to pay less than the > price of downloading a Radiohead album from Amazon. Success should be > measured by how many people who would have paid Amazon to download the > album freely choose to contribute the Amazon price. > > mm > > On 10/1/07, Dave Walker wrote: >> Any opinion on what Radiohead's doing with the next album? >> (in brief: self-releasing, downloads are priced flexibly based on >> whatever >> listeners are willing to pay, physical release will be a super- >> deluxo box >> with lots of extra goodies, like Prince they've cut the Big 4 >> completely out >> of the equation.) >> >> Coverage here: >> >> http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1666973,00.html >> >> -d.w. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 11:54:25 -0400 From: "Michael Zwirn" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Radiohead's business model To: loud-fans@smoe.org Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Radiohead's business model Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 10:11:49 -0500 I think this is a great idea. Considering how little most artists make on the average CD sale (I've heard in the neighborhood of $1 to $2), I can't imagine they would make LESS money doing this than they would through conventional means. Well, actually, it would seem to argue for artists selling fewer CDs, and more bagels, but I digress. I'll point out that as many loudfans already know, Radiohead isn't the first act to do this, merely the biggest. Jane Siberry, who's gone quite a bit off the deep end from what I can tell, has been doing this on her site at www.sheeba.ca for awhile. She also posts statistics, which could be totally true or totally fabricated (no way to tell) that seem to show that most people OVERPAY for her music relative to the list prices. Of course, Jane Sibbery's fans are a rather devoted clientele. (By the way, she's now calling herself Issa, for reasons I can't explain, and I shied away from seeing her in concert out of fear that I'd be woefully disappointed....) Michael ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V7 #230 *******************************