mattus.co.uk: the website of Matt Wood

I’ve heard many justifications from people who illegally download music, not least myself. One of the most frequently espoused is that CDs are overpriced; the price of the record is disproportionate to the amount and quality of material the purchaser receives. As most of the money goes to the record companies anyway – so the theory goes – arbitrarily high music prices are screwing not only the fan but also the artist.

For somebody who loves music and dearly wishes that it were available more cheaply and without nonsensical usage restrictions, the In Rainbows experiment was a breakthrough. Radiohead, for the uninitiated, made a record after the conclusion of their recording contract and offered it for sale directly on their website, thus stripping out the middleman. But – and here’s the clever bit – the purchaser could set their own price, according to their estimation of the record’s worth; for me, this was £8.99.

Now it’s not a perfect system, I’ll admit. It would never work for smaller bands, and it would’ve been good to have some way to listen to samples of the record beforehand in a secure environment before choosing how much to give. In the absence of such a feature, many admirers donated significant sums simply in support of the band’s new business model.

Nevertheless, I was disappointed to read that the majority of ‘purchasers’ had paid precisely nothing for the album. Nothing? The key here is that Radiohead have nullified the traditional excuses for the non-purchase of both physical music (it’s too expensive) and of electronic music (its usage is restricted, it’s too expensive). This wasn’t just a slightly novel method of obtaining another free album; this was a matter of principle. If you were given the chance to value music yourself, and you chose £0.00 or its equivalent in your local currency, then you just gave the RIAA and all the other cronies who control the music industry every excuse to continue with the imposition of their arcane business model.

And that’s a high price to pay.