Radiohead, Rainbows and RIAA

There's been a lot of P2P / music / what's next for the music industry talk on the cards lately, but I'm starting to get fed up hearing about the "next great model" for music distribution. It seems everyone only thinks there are two options: stick with the current method of paying wodges of cash for CDs and watch RIAA become increasingly deranged, or offer up all of your music for "free" and usher in a new era of rainbows shining out of our butts and happy clappy hippies dancing round in circles or whatever.

The truth is, both of these approaches have their flaws. And, in the case of "give it away for free" (or at least, let you decide how much to pay), Radiohead aren't quite as "revolutionary" as they'd like you to think. Major bands have been gimping around with innovative net-based distribution models for a long time - Public Enemy, with web based albums (1999s "There's a Poison going on" was the first entirely MP3-based album made available by a mainstream band), YouTube pimpage (hey Prince, take note and stop trying to "reclaim the Internet". That's my job, dammit) and music community / distribution sites - most readily spring to mind. It's just that, by and large, nobody really cared at the time because they didn't really get what they were doing. But really, they were way ahead of the pack.

Don't forget Prince, either. See, Prince was sort of onto something when he gave away his latest album with a newspaper.

The problem is, it was crap.

And there's the rub - free music is only worth writing home about if the music is actually any good in the first place.

By what felt like the millionth preachy ballad in a row, I was ready to hurl his new album out the window. You want to give me something free, Prince? Then make it comparable to Batman, for crying out loud (yes, yes, shut up about Sign O' The Times already. Nothing comes close to Batdance or Partyman. Fact).

Radiohead? Meh. If the quality is as good as any of their previous efforts, then fine. Awesome. We have a winner. But God, if it's some bland garbage that's not actually very good then so freaking what? I'm supposed to care that The Charlatans are giving away a whole album for free too? Haha. There's a reason for The Charlatans giving away an album, and it's because you wouldn't want to pay a tenner for it in the shops.

And now, of course, the floodgates have opened and every faded mainstream act you can think of is smelling profit galore - so they think - in the air.

Oasis? Please, every album they made after the first two sucked. You can skirt around it however you want, but they did. They sucked hard.

Jamiroquai? Oh God, 1997 is calling and it wants its Johnny Two Step dancer back.

Musicians have been giving away free - and very good - albums for a long time (and don't forget all the bands from Grateful Dead onwards who run with a "taping allowed" policy at their live shows. I think the last major band to embrace this approach was Smashing Pumpkins, not so long ago).

What HASN'T happened yet, as far as I'm aware, is an overly mainstream band with a huge fanbase giving away something of comparable quality. When that actually happens, then there has indeed been a shift in focus that will make record companies sit up and take notice. It's all very well people banging on that "if we give away the music for free and make the big bucks via touring then everyone's a winner", but there's only a handful of bands that can actually generate a profit via touring. Everyone else presumably has to go stick up newsagents at gunpoint to cover the cost of a new bass guitar? Eh, can't see it happening somehow.

So yeah. Simply giving it away for free isn't going to magically fix everything either.

Incidentally, Deerhoof rock and here's a free album. Enjoy.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish my security book and charge you a dollar to download it. Chapter 12: "Security Experts I have seen Naked and Smeared in Jam" is sure to be lawyer-licious.