It's worth my waiting for it to be posted to an mp3 blog.

There seems to be something of a competition amongst hardcore Radiohead fans I've encountered to prove who loves the band the most, and this seems to be a great way to, er, "reach" them.

I gave £10 for the download... but if it's one of their better ones I'll buy the disc box.

It's worth being incredibly pissed at the weak US dollar. I could justify $50 for the disc box (to myself, but maybe not to viachicago) but $80?

That said, I'll probably toss a few quid their way for the download.

what's the "processing fee" that's going to be attached to each download?

45p for me. May vary by country/credit card etc, though.

Gotta catch 'em all!

I paid full price for the box set, because I recently got a raise and decided to splurge.

I think a lot of fans might be pissed when/if the CDs come out in stores next year.

£10, too.

Well, I'm still into owning a physical CD and £40 for the deluxe box is a bit steep for me at the moment and a normal release is coming in January 2008. So I threw £2 at them for the download because, at the minimum, I'll be buying the normal one in January.

I wish I could forward this thread to an email address they would actually read, because I'm sure they're not going to get any decent poll data.

Hmm, it'd be a good idea to put a poll up somewhere really public.

Poll

We were talking about this at the Local tonight. I don't really much care for Radiohead, so I'd pay $2 for the whole download. A band I did care for? For a 14-track DRM-free album, I'd pay between $5 and $15 (US), where $5 represents a band whose record I'd try to pick up used and $15 represents a band whose record I would pick up new (and buy advance tickets to the show for).

The only "extra" that would entice me to kick in more would be back catalog "rarities".

I think it's an interesting approach but not wholly unheard of. There's a service out there for any idiot with a four-track that actually lets the popularity of a tune determine its download price. If no-one is downloading the track, it's free, but as it becomes more popular, the price goes up (capping around $2, I think).

I don't think pay-what-its-worth will be the future of music sales, but I do think direct sales, instead of label sales, will be. Not that bands won't still need handlers and studio guys and whathaveyou, just that the services the guys other than the musicians provide will have to change. If that makes sense. It's 0430 and I'm up for no good goddamn reason.

I paid 6 pounds plus the handling fee thing. If it's good, I'll buy it on disc in some form later on. (I wasn't a huge fan of Hail to the Thief, so basically that's the bar- if it's better than that, I'll buy it on disc.)

Cool, Chuckdarwin! answers from the poll suggests not a lot! I was interested in the approach though. Let's see that develop a bit.

I wasn't a huge fan of Hail to the Thief, so basically that's the bar- if it's better than that, I'll buy it on disc.

The feeling is that Thom got his ya-yas out on The Eraser and that In Rainbows is more of a 'group effort'. I wish he'd leave the really esoteric electronica on his future solo efforts. I *like* The Eraser, but I want to hear all five of the lads.

Cool, Chuckdarwin!

Have there not been polls here before?

only a nOOb, been a member for less than a year, but I haven't seen one

If the download fee is $1, I'll pay $9 for it.

If was only paying for the download, I'd pay £7, since I usually buy albums on release day from Best Buy for $13.00

Derail: Does Best Buy just take a loss for all the albums sold that day, or is someone further up the chain biting the price difference?

p.s.
Everyone has different valuations for recorded music, but for my own calculations for what a 'reasonable' price for downloaded music is:

- Using a budget of $160 for recorded music per year.
- One full 40 GB mp3 player @ $160 = (40GB) = $13/GB = 33 cents per album = 3 cents per track.

- &@ One half cent for the bandwidth for an entire album hosted at Amazon's S3.
- &@ As hosting costs then equal 20 cents/year: that leaves $159.80 for artist's royalties and compensation distribution costs. 32.5 cents/album, minus financing, to the artist.

Yeah - I'll pay about a fiver for it.
Thankfully, £4.50 of that will go to Radiohead. So that's nice.