Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Radiohead's Interesting Experiment

You may (or may not) have seen that Radiohead have released their latest album, In Rainbows in a somewhat unorthodox way. Rather than sell it in shops (so 1980s) or put through iTunes or whatnot, it's available for download from a special site. Not a particularly nice looking one though. Punters can decide what price to pay for the download - from nothing right through to a billion pounds. Possibly.

Now clearly the rational thing to do from a customer's point of view is to pay the lowest price possible - after all this is what most people do when shopping. Why pay five pounds when you can pay four? One might therefore expect most people to go for the lowest price possible for the album, ie zero. I think it will therefore be interesting to see how much people do pay, if anything. My guess is that it will average two or three quid.

Personally, I have taken the following things into account when deciding what to pay.
1. Radiohead's last few albums have been a bit rubbish.
2. I'm saving for my holiday.
3. On eMusic, I pay about three pounds for an album.
4. I wouldn't buy it if it was on CD in a shop.

and most importantly,

5. I can't get the website to work.

And so I've decided to forget the whole thing for now at least.

The answer would have been £2.55 though, if you're interested.

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