How Much Would You Pay?

A real album for free. Well almost depending on your conscience and beliefs.

As fast as the photography world and creative fields are changing the music business has always seemed to be even more cutting edge. Vast number of platforms, huge catalog of material and not only has DRM (digital rights management) pushed itself into the conversation but so to has a wealth of sales and promotion models. Our micro stock and various layers of RF imagery seem largely based on models the music industry threw out first.

So as you may already know Radiohead released it's first studio album (seventh overall), In Rainbows, free of their label EMI and have caused a stir. It's downloadable direct from the band via their site and you decide what to pay. I've already seen responses on CNN ranging from why pay to $10 to $100. A bold and innovative move and will be interesting to see the response from both public and business sides.

On the same note Getty has recently put out their new music service, Pump Audio, as well. Pump existed years prior to the Getty takeover but why would the 1000 lb gorilla be moving into music. Is the model the same as imagery and they feel they can simply spread around creative content to the growing number of multimedia platforms regardless of the specific nature of the work itself?

And as I mentioned in a previous post (Light Painting & Moby) Moby has moved into this terrain already as well. Through his site artists can apply to license tunes for non-profit work. Is this happening with images?

With the obvious correlation between business and distribution models between music and photography then is this a direction that we are headed. Who's the first visual mediaist to stick their work out in the public domain for public use and pricing? Is there even any validity in this model? Does it only apply to large scale, known operators as they have a user/fan base already in place?

Speaking personally, when I get through to the download, I'm paying for sure. I want to see this work ... and where it goes. How much ... that may just determine how committed we are all.