It was the 10th of October 2007 when Radiohead launched what would have changed the configuration of the free music economy, the beginning of a new way how music can be distributed online.
A year after, what can be concluded in terms of the impact of Radiohead's move in the music distribution industry?
The "chose your own price model" has for sure revolutionized the independent distribution model. However, saying that this is how the future of music distribution will be like it might be too naive.
Radiohead is not the first band on the planet to exploit internet distribution but they probably were the first famous band to do it.
The experiment worked very well for Radiohead especially for the considerable amount of publicity they received but, at the end, it is just one of the thousands ideas bands are trying out to get their slice of attention.
I doubt that an average indie band would have received the same degree of attention.
For sure Radiohead set up an example for other bands to follow but their model can not be considered as a template solution for the struggling music business. It was more of a solution for Radiohead than for the entire music industry.
Probably the real lesson to be learned is that there are as many ways to sell music as musicians.
I also wonder if Radiohead would have planned the launch slightly differently, by providing a streaming version of the album for people to try out before downloading it, things would have evolved in a different way.
By not providing a streaming version, the only way for people to judge how much the album was worth to them was to download it.
And many people probably did it for free since they didn't know if it was worth it more than that.
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