Feldman, Radiohead, and Paste

I ordered a subscription to Paste Magazine today. Why? Because they let me decide what a years worth of magazines was worth to me. They did set $1 as the lowest possible price for 11 issues but I have a feeling a lot people are going to pay more than that. I did.

I’ve been kind of fascinated with this idea since I read the story of Paul Feldman in Freakonomics. Feldman is the bagel salesman who trusted his customers to pay, rather than forcing them, and made a lot of interesting discoveries

I tried the idea out on my own with an album I released with a friend under the name Something Explosive. We allowed our album to be downloaded for free as zip file, or as a torrent. In exchange, we asked for fans to donate whatever they thought the album was worth. We managed to get about 350 downloads of the zip file and 300 downloads of the torrent, but unfortunately no one followed through with the donation. While we could have set a minimum of $1 like Paste, we were more interested in being heard than being paid.

More recently and more famously, Radiohead tried the idea with In Rainbows. I haven’t seen the follow up on how much the average fan paid for the album, but I’m interested in what everyone thought it was worth, or if they saw it as more of a freebie (or $0.01-bie?).

I’m still looking for an opportunity to try this idea again. It can definitely be difficult though, especially assuming you consider what you’re releasing into world to be valuable. It stands to either be a rude awakening or a pleasant surprise, but there’s no telling where it’s going to head.

It can be even more difficult with the anonymity that the internet brings. Is everyone going to be less moral when it seems that no one is watching? It can often seem that way after reading through forum or comment threads. But I do have faith in people to be decent, and hopefully if you give them the opportunity to show that, they will. Companies like the RIAA and MPAA have been proving the exact opposite of this for years now. Hopefully new ideas like this will prove that there is hope in new business models, new media, and new ways of thinking about commerce.