NEW YORK - "How much are you going to pay?"
For a week that has been the question on the lips - and at the fingertips - of Radiohead fans. After hours of blog and water cooler arguments, fans were finally able to name their price to preorder the band's new album, In Rainbows.
At a Manhattan indie record label, one employee decided to pay 14 cents, and another gave $5, said a colleague, Sarah Fields. And Fields, who works in digital marketing at the label, decided to charge herself $9.
"Radiohead's been my favorite band since I was 13 years old," Fields, 26, said on Tuesday night outside Webster Hall, where she had gone for a concert. "I felt, like, an honor code with them."
Since Sept. 30, when this British rock band announced that it would independently release its first studio album since 2003 as a pay-what-you-wish download this Wednesday, there has been a perfect storm of interest amongfans and industry watchers. Online and in record stores, clubs, bars and label and public relations offices, the announcement was hotly debated, a de facto referendum on what to do about illegal file-sharing and the declining music business, spurred by one of rock's most respected and forward-looking bands.
The consensus online and in the media seemed to be that the band's maneuver was a gamechanging moment in the industry - or, as one commenter on the music blog Stereogum.com put it, "This is absolutely the coolest thing any band has ever done."
Radiohead's move is as much an experiment in consumer behavior and the socially acceptable cost of art as it is a way to distribute records. Each donation is a sort of commentary: on the nature of fandom and band loyalty, on the indier-than-thou current rock scene, and on the worth of buying - not sampling or stealing - new music.
"It could change the feelings about free downloading," said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University inPittsburgh. "If the band is willing to trust you to pay what's fair, all of a sudden, for the people who have been saying it's not stealing to download the song for free, it's much more difficult to rationalize that. I think it may be a brilliant move in that dimension."
Loewenstein, whose specialty is behavioral economics and who has studied the relationship between emotions and financial decision making, added: "It's almost like supporting a sports team or donating to a political candidate. You're selling to the world how much you like them by how much you pay." Most important, he said, "how much you are willing to pay signals something to yourself about who you are: Are you exploitative? Are you a tightwad?"
Sarah Lewitinn, 27, a cofounder of the record label Stolen Transmission and a blogger known as Ultragrrrl, was torn. "The fan in me wants to pay $80, but the person that's paying rentwants to pay $8," Lewitinn, a Radiohead devotee, said.
Nathan Kaufman, 25, another Radiohead megafan, said of the plan, "I got geeked about it immediately." Radiohead posters once covered his college dorm room, and he owns five of the band's albums, though, he said, he hadn't paid for any.
But In Rainbows will be different. "I would probably pay, depending on the last paycheck, $5 to $8," he said Tuesday night, as he and some friends stood outside the Lower East Sideclub Cake Shop. But when the rest of his group moved inside, Kaufman, an actor, admitted that he would be more likely to pony up about $2. "I wouldn't take it for free," he said. "It's symbolic."
Like Kaufman, who said his donation would be the equivalent of "cheering loud at their concerts," many other fans seemed to want to reward Radiohead - either for its artistry or its audacity.
On Tuesday a representative of the band announced that most people pre-ordering the album - at the Web site www.in rainbows.com- were not only paying, they were also springing for a pricey boxed set, which includes a second CD, a vinyl LP and a booklet of artwork, for the fixed price of 40 pounds, or about $82, including shipping. (Exact sales figures are not yet available.)
Of course, not everyone is feeling so generous. On Tuesday Adam Baruchowitz, 34, amagazine business director, was browsing at Other Music, the downtown Manhattan record store. He said he would pay only $5, partly because he believed that Radiohead already had plenty of money.
And Dan Hougland, the store's floor manager, noted that the band's sliding-scale plan isn't without precedent. He compared the band to Wilco, which after being dropped by its label in 2001, released the album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot free online.
"I thought this was the Britishtwist: 'How much are we worth to you?'" Hougland said.
Though some musicians have already begun to ponder a future of alternative payment plans, experts inside and out of the music industry say they do not believe that Radiohead's model can work for everyone. For one thing, only established acts with an extremely dedicated fan base could prosper that way, Lewitinn said. For another, the novelty would wear off quickly.
"It's cheap to signal what a great person you are by paying $5 for a download," Loewenstein said. "But suppose there are 50 albums you want, and each of them are asking you, 'How much do you want to pay?' Then it gets more expensive to signal to yourself how wonderful you are."
For now, though, fans seem to be content to show their approval. As Fields said, "It's like the best marketing scheme in the world."
Style, Pages 63 on 10/07/2007