A fan is a fan

I haven’t bought a record for years. Many of my friends don’t own a CD player. When I listen to music it’s on my iPod or my iTunes. Young people today are growing up with downloading music from day one. And we see it as our right to download music. It is going to be tough for the music industry to change our point of view and what has become a part of our life. Today record companies are an analog fossil in I digital world.

Since music can be downloaded from anonymous users it doesn’t feels like steeling directly from the artist. It’s more like spreading music. And the music is going to spread even if the artist doesn’t want to. Musicians should take advantage of this instead. A good example is Radiohead who released their album on their website for free downloading and if you liked it you could donate money. Today they made good money this way and I read that the average price each downloader paid was 6 $. Thom Yorke says:
In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.

So why pick a fight with your fans and listeners? Why just don’t see them as consumers who want music in a new way? And an unsatisfied costumer will please their needs elsewhere if you can’t please them. A fan is a fan no matter how they get the music.

Payment today isn’t just money, it is also attention.