Radiohead ploy wins over radical editor

By Joseph Gauger
Collegian Editor
October 17, 2007

I downloaded In Rainbows as an act of protest against the crass capitalism of the record industry. I paid £2.50 for it, even though I wasn’t really a fan of Radiohead (which is no longer the case after a few listens through the album). This decision begs two interesting questions: First, why do I have it out for the record industry? Second, am I really doing something to change the way music is produced by supporting Radiohead?

The major record labels are in the business of selling records, and in order to do so they press a huge number of tracks which I am reluctant to call music. Profit pollutes music as it does any art form, and there is no easy distinction between artists who are “in it for the music” and those with less saintly motivations. There are plenty of bands signed to major labels I would like to support, but I can’t separate them from the industry that produces so much commercially-motivated drivel. I care enough about music to boycott the companies which have spent decades adulterating it with utter crap.

The Recording Industry Association of America, an umbrella group of those companies, has been committed to defeating peer-to-peer download services for years. The organization’s name is frank about whose interests it protects: record executives. They are notorious for suing vulnerable and often destitute people in their crusade to protect intellectual property rights. The RIAA’s members don’t deserve my money and their claims to ownership of other people’s art don’t stir any sympathy within me. The artists who earned that money receive a tiny fraction of it.

There’s no doubt that the In Rainbows experiment is a smart move on Radiohead’s part; the band is simultaneously acknowledging that no one can stop fans from getting their music for free if they want to and capturing every available dollar on the market. Radiohead can price-discriminate with perfect sensitivity to the customer’s willingness to pay. Other artists will be quick to release albums under similar arrangements. There is relatively little standing in the way of independent musicians producing their own albums and distributing them to fans via the Internet. Radiohead benefits from its sizable established fan base, but legions of independent artists have sold well without ever relying on the resources of the major labels. Other than the tenure of existing record deals, the only major weapon the recording industry has in its effort to staunch an exodus of recording artists is the capital it can devote to producing records and winning them radio play.

I’ve seen decent albums made in friends’ basements, though. Artists who are willing to abandon the traditional way of recording and producing records will be as successful in an Internet-based industry as they can be in the existing one as it strains under the effects of peer-to-peer file sharing.

Artists who cling to major record labels (or are bound by current contracts) can expect a sharp drop in demand for their records as those listeners who actually want to see musicians continue to make music give money directly to independent artists. An industry that is already flailing around trying to figure out what to do about illegal downloading will have to compete with legal ones as well. In Rainbows is a potent blow against a system which has produced prolefeed and called it art for too long.

gaugerj1@lasalle.edu