I may be old
But I'm still relatively with it. I think. Just downloaded Radiohead's IN RAINBOWS as of about ten minutes ago. A little stuttery, but mostly painless. Commendable affort on their part, given that the servers are probably being UTTERLY HAMMERED right around now, given the free publicity that the "pay as you exit" strategy has engendered.
For those of you not paying attention, Radiohead, a band of some celebrity (and yet still maintaining critical/aesthetic credibility), has offered their latest album, IN RAINBOWS as a digital download. They're not offering a physical artifact, but for a collector's edition (vinyl and all that in a deluxe package) for a stately sum in a couple months. If you want it now, you have to get it as a download. Which can be copied as many times as you want without any restrictions. This means that it'll be all over the internet by...three hours or more ago.
The catch is, you don't have to pay a nickel for it. You could download it for a penny or pay twenty bucks for it. Me? I paid 5 pounds, which is around as much as I'd pay for the CD once it hit first-week sales. Am I silly? Probably. But I liked their last three albums well enough that I can take a chance on it without feeling too bad about it. My guess is that a lot of folks will pay about ten bucks for it, maybe less. Thing is, this money goes to the band and not to the record company, because they're not under a contract right now. Is this sane? Sure it is. Bands like Radiohead make some money on the albums, but the record companies make more. Radiohead, et al, will make a lot more money touring and filling arenas for multi-night engagements (of course, they'll have to foot that bill themselves, or pay the part that the record company regularly would.)
How's this gonna work out? Heck if I know. But I figure at least that Radiohead will be able to pay off their studio time and production costs for IN RAINBOWS (and have a wad leftover if they were smart about how they used the studio time itself -- that stuff ain't cheap, believe me.) Of course, Radiohead was in a position to do this in the first place because of their own talent/skill, and the work of the marketers at the record label that got the word out and helped make Radiohead as big as they are.
Watershed moment? It'll probably be the one that makes the books, though Prince and a couple other artists have done this beforehand. But this one made a ton of headlines because, arguably, Radiohead were at the peak of their popularity with their last album. OK COMPUTER (released about eight years back, maybe more) had more MTV visibility, but the three follow-on albums haven't been compromising in terms of quality/"difficulty", and have all done very well. We'll see where this goes. Should be very interesting for everyone involved.
The next big story like this will be the band that breaks because of free digital downloads/distribution. Radiohead already made it. And if this sinks, they'll be fine. They're gambling an album's worth of material that will still drive fans into stadiums. But folks who have nothing, they're the real pioneers in this.