Radiohead To Promote Album With New Year’s Eve Concert on Current TV

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1. mmt
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 11:25 am

   what better way to make money than to give your product away? the free stuff will work for awhile as a gimmick. then, it won’t even work for that. maybe musicians and voip providers can band together and figure out how to make some cash.

2. Ballmer
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 11:26 am

   They are the headliners, but Balm is the warmup band this year! We are coming along fast for only being around a month.
   fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

3. Ballmer
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 11:27 am

   Thats http://virb.com/balm/

4. Jeff Greco
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 11:39 am

   I don’t think the free download “buzz” had much to do with the album’s position at the top of critics charts - it’s Radiohead, ferchrissakes, it was going to be up there regardless.

   Still, looking forward to putting a ripped version of the concert on my iPod right next to the album itself.

5. Kaiyzen
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 11:40 am

   Although I am a big Radiohead fan and am interested to see how they.., and other artists are starting to look at how to provide their art in new ways to “embrace” digital distribution, it has the potential to really endanger a lot of music careers out there.

   I have a problem with a good amount of the folks writing out there.., no offense to Eric in particular.., who seem to cheer on Radiohead and other artists who give their stuff away and are distancing themselves from labels. You guys give such praise.., and say how this is going to be the end labels and how stupid they have been behaving., how this the beginning of the end for the labels current way of life.., etc, etc.

   Most.., if not ALL of the tech bloggers seem to have little to zero knowledge of the economics and logistics of how the industry works and how the average major artist.., let alone indie’s with little to no following cannot create or maintain a career with this type of model.

   Radiohead, NIN, Madonna, etc can try these sorts of things because they are already huge with millioins of fans around the world and they are about %99.999999 certain they will sell out most of their shows anywhere they go in the world and still sell a TON of albums even if they give fans options to pay or not.

   The music industry and tech world have a lot of similarities with how they operate with VC’s playing the role of the labels, and of course the hot new tech startup playing the role of the artist. Technology developement being commoditized and startup costs plummeting are akin to digital home recording costs and online distrtibution creating almost a zero barrier of entry for artists. The fact remains without the backing, guidance, networking a VC and the labels provide, tech startups and artists are pretty much going nowhere.

   Although they can be a pain to deal with and screw people over from time to time they ARE a “necessary evil”. They labels even have a similar profit model as VC’s where about %90+ of the deals they work on dont really do anything and there are really just a handfull of people that bring home the bacon each year.., all others are write offs. They are needed to keep the industry moving forward and introduce new artists to the masses to see what sticks and what doesnt.

   Again.., not taking particular shots here.., love this site and all the content that spews from it.., but all the tech bloggers out there should really learn as much about the industry as they can before writing on this subject and sounding pretty ignorant at times.., this isnt one of those times since Eric didnt really say too much. I just happen to have some free downtime to rant b/c of the holidays

   If things continue on the path we have been on for the past couple years what we will be seeing is not the liberation of artists from the labels but even tighter control over what is popular and what is not by the labels, the big box retailers.., and of course our good friends at Viacom/MTV.

6. GregToo
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 11:44 am

   Interesting article, Erick, though shouldn’t that be: “You’ve got to hand it to those guys *in* Radiohead?” It’s a band, not a company.

7. Aaron
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am

   @6 - GregToo - I was just about to post that exact same comment!

   It’s nice to see CurrentTV finally getting something they can really show off AND putting it at a SPECIFIC time, as opposed to their usual giant party shuffle of random shorts they call ‘programming.’

   After they bought a short documentary I produced, I was able to talk to a lot of folks at Current for about a year on and off after they launched. Really cool people, but the randomness of their programming, while fun, is what makes it so difficult to get into. I’ve loved the station when I’ve been able to watch it and I wish them the best of luck, but they’ve got a huge uphill battle even several years after launch.

8. cynic
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

   “it has the potential to really endanger a lot of music careers out there.” -Kaiyzen

   perhaps if bands made any money from album sales, this would be true.

   fortunately, only the record companies lose out when i download music.

   …and seeing as how i’m not a bush republican, i really don’t care that some music executive might have to work three or four more hours to buy his 16 year-old daughter that $300,000 maserati.

   and speaking of….

   rep. wexler needs your signature to begin impeachment hearings against dick cheney.

   http://www.wexlerwantshearings.com

9. Chris L
   

   December 26th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

   “Now that all the buzz has propelled the album to No. 1 on many critics’ lists” Critics dont judge based on buzz, they judge on talent.

10. Hepcat
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 12:45 pm

    I can’t get to the site from work to confirm, but I believe their site is current.tv

11. Erick Schonfeld
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    @GregToo, the last time I checked the band put out its own record on TBD Records. Radiohead is as much a corporate entity as it is a band.

12. elegance
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    why wait

    see it now on :

    http://tinyurl.com/2tz3av

13. Joshua
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

    They’ve got a whole section on Radiohead
    current.com/radiohead

14. Humble Pie
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    Too bad it’s not still available from their site…

    I’d like to give ‘em 5 or 10 bucks for it — I wasn’t able to get around to it when it first came out…

    Are the Torrent sites are my only option now for the ablum?
    (Due to the worthless dollar-to-pound exchange, the box set is $80….eew)

15. TTN
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    Aren’t ALL concerts essentially “a free commercial for” the album that their touring for?

16. Kaiyzen
    

    December 26th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    cynic:

    The sad fact is that they have to have significant sales.., typically over 250.000 copies to begin to make any significant loot., but saying bands make no $$$ from their album sales is just incorrect. Lets look at two scenarios in an extreme case where artists would lose 50% of their sales to piracy:

    1) Major Artist who woulud sell 2 million copies sells only 1 million. These guys are still taken home some good $$$ with 1 million album sales even after a 4/5 split between the band members, let alone if they are a solo artist or work in a “band for hire” type scenario.

    2) Smaller artist signed to major or indie label looking to break the 250K barrier but losing half and only selling 100K+.

    Now you could say “Wow.., that small artist just doubled their listening audience due to digital distribution/piracy”.., or you could say..,

    “Wow.., that band that is making little to NO money currently and really needs to show they can sell in order to put out their next album just lost out on a significant chunck of their revenue.”

    Of course you have to consider that fact that NOT every person who pirates music would purchase.., but you get the point on how smaller artists trying to make a career need every cent they can get.

    Erick:

    You are correct.., Radiohead.., and EVERY other band is a business entity. Look in pretty much any album foot notes and you will see the name of the entity for the band and/or their licensing entity they have setup.., typically they are LLC’s

17. Basil
    

    December 27th, 2007 at 6:59 am

    Not sure if I’m the only one, but I bought it (for more than the price of an average CD) and then downloaded it from torrent- its faster, and it automatically went into the same folder as my other music. I figured that ethically, I would be better off costing p2p sharers bandwidth than the band.

18. basil
    

    December 27th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    http://www.ideapad.biz

19. rocknroll
    

    December 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    mTraks.com for DRM-free digital music marketplace and community where all music is compatible with all mp3 players and various subscription packages available.

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