Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

The music industry, inside and out, is agog about Radiohead’s plan to release their forthcoming CD, In Rainbows, on their own through their own website, as a digital download next Wednesday and as a box set with both the CD and 2xLP versions of the album and a bonus CD on December 10th. The files will be DRM-free audio files – presumably a high-quality MP3 format between 192 and 320 kbps, although in my opinion, their best bet would be as a CD-quality variable-bit-rate MP3 (which is the exact format eMusic.com uses). They’ve done their time with Capitol/EMI and want to play by their own rules now. The top rule of their new playbook is allowing fans to set their own price for the download-only version (diehard Radiohead fans will no doubt shell £40 – about $80 US – for the CD/2xLP “Discbox”). This is the biggest risk of all because there will be those people who will set a price of zero – or try to. (Since the site is based in Britain and goes by pounds sterling, I placed an order for the download only, setting a price of £5, or $10 US – the equivalent of buying a full album on iTunes; every order has a 45p fee attached no matter how much of an advance donation the customer provides.)

I am rather surprised that Radiohead are going this route because they have been one of the biggest high-profile holdouts insofar as making their back catalog available on iTunes. (Les Zeppelin, AC/DC and The Beatles are the others.) Their now-former label, Capitol/EMI, coincidentally, was the first major label to join in on the iTunes Plus option that allows users to download 256kbps DRM-free AAC files rather than the CD-quality 128kbps protected AAC files that are the current iTunes standard.

Prince and Todd Rundgren attempted similar measures on a subscription basis – both long since halted – but both also started before cable and DSL web connections became commonplace. Daft Punk also tried a similar scheme by starting a private service that could be accessed with a PIN number included with early pressings of their 2001 album Discovery (the tracks have since been released on the albums Daft Club and Alive 1997). Robert Fripp – another iTunes holdout – has been selling archival live and studio recordings of King Crimson, their various splinter groups, and many of his other projects through his own website, DGMLive.com, for the past two years in both MP3 and the audiophile-friendly FLAC format, and also gives fans the option of downloading the purchased albums either directly through one’s web browser or via the use of BitTorrent. (DGMLive.com also, as of 9.28.07, also simultaneously released Fripp’s newest solo album, At The End Of Time, as MP3 and FLAC downloads, alongside the physical CD.)

Radiohead’s approach is notable for several reasons. For one, they are the highest profile artist ever to attempt to sell digital downloads directly through their own website. (Their partner in this effort is their longtime merchandiser, the UK-based Waste Company.) Secondly, their business model is apparently designed to cockblock any possibility of their new album leaking onto the Internet before its release date – a nuisance for artists big and small. Reviewers who would normally get an advance copy of the CD weeks in advance are now forced to wait until the actual album is released through Radiohead’s website before they can listen to and write about it. (Advance press copies of albums have long been identified as a source of Internet leaks, something I intend to discuss in length in a later article.) Third, they can walk away with a bigger share of the proceeds from each digital sale than they would have done had they used this approach in conjunction with Capitol or another major label (although there’s still the danger of people deliberately donating nothing – or less than the £5 I paid – for the actual album when they order a download – the 45p fee being charged to every user’s credit or debit card is doubtlessly going to Waste Company’s operating costs, not Radiohead’s.)

I can only think of one disadvantage to this scheme – and that would be someone donating a mere fraction of the £5 I donated – and then giving away the downloaded files to anyone who wanted them. There is no doubt that these files will circulate once they get officially released, but that is one of the risks in the music industry that is highly unlikely to be stemmed anytime soon.

Radiohead’s idea is a great one – but would it work for every artist? I’m sure every artist has its hardcore fans who would go for it lock stock and barrel – and there’s quite a few artists that I am a devotee of that I would support in such a venture.

For one of the scopes of this blog, the question is, would it work for Japanese pop artists? Probably.

To focus the scope even closer: Would a scheme like Radiohead’s work for Morning Musume and Hello! Project? I would like to think that it would. However, there’s that little matter of whether Up-Front Works, Hello! Project’s parent company, would allow people outside of Japan to be able to purchase a digital album from their website. Many Western fans are no doubt frustrated with the fact that no one outside of Japan can purchase a membership with any official H!P artist’s club at the present time, and while much of Hello! Project’s back catalog is available on Japanese iTunes, one either has to have a Japanese bank account or go through JList.com to purchase Japanese iTunes cards to access protected AAC files of their favorite H!P artists. (Yes, I know that a few H!P artists have found their way onto US iTunes, and many other J-Pop artists are there as well, but that’s a subject for another column.)

At the same time, I think the typical Morning Musume/H!P fan would rather purchase the physical CD. Sure, whoever the digital provider is – say Apple themselves – could provide the PDF booklet and maybe the iPod-ready video file of the PV – but look at how many different versions of a typical MoMusu, Berryz Koubou, or ºC-ute single or album have been offered simultaneously in the past. There’s been at least three versions (not counting the “Single V” DVDs) of the audio single with different packaging and bonuses of recent Morning Musume singles (I usually just go for the one with the bonus DVD) – the popular assumption here in the States is that Up-Front Works and their associated labels are targeting the really, really hardcore fans that will buy anything with their favorite MoMusu on it. The odds of whether they’d go for the Morning Musume equivalent of Radiohead’s In Rainbows “DiscBox” (which would probably include an album-sized photobook rather than a 180gram double-vinyl version of the CD, like Radiohead’s DiscBox) are pretty much even.

What happens at InRainbows.com on 10.10.07 will tell the tale – and whether it’s the beginning or the end of it. I’m sure I’ll be following this column up once I’ve undergone my Radiohead download experience.