oh, go for it then

Intereting read over at arstechnica. I've inserted additional material into the original text. I may add more thoughts on this later.

P2P vs Radiohead's "free" Rainbows: why P2P can be a hard habit to break
By Nate Anderson | Published: October 18, 2007 - 11:11PM CT

Radiohead's innovative digital distribution arrangement for their new album, In Rainbows, lets people pay whatever they want for the music, including nothing at all. Despite that, BitTorrent swapping of the album has been on the level of other major releases. Are people really so cheap that they won't even register with the band in order to snag a free download? The answer appears to be yes.

By handling the recording, mastering, and distribution themselves, the band managed to keep the tubes clear of any Rainbows before the official launch (no mean feat for a hotly anticipated album). Once the album became available for download, though, it spilled immediately onto P2P networks, primarily BitTorrent. According to BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland, who spoke with Ars about the issue, the album was grabbed by BitTorrent users roughly 240,000 times in the first day of release and has tailed off since in "a perfect half-life curve."

Insert. Source: Alexa

Insert. Source: Infofilter

Unlike most BitTorrent song swapping, In Rainbows is generally being shared as a complete album. Radiohead, which hasn't been known for singles in the last decade, might be pleased that their work is being downloaded as a whole, but would no doubt prefer that people get it from the band's website.

Garland speculates that convenience is the main factor at work here; price doesn't enter into the equation. Radiohead's site does request a number of user details that go beyond the e-mail address needed to create an account and retrieve the download code, and such a process will put some people off at any price. Plenty of users have simply become accustomed to getting their music from BitTorrent; for this group, it's easier to simply grab it when the album shows up on the network than to visit another site, register, get an e-mail, and then download the songs.

Insert: I was also reading presentation by Tantek Çelik on the issue of Social Network Portability The reason I have been purusing this is the number of websites where I now have to be a registered member. I have to input my email address, etc details EVERY time I want to check out something new. Right now, there are a LOT of them. Think about it, how many websites do you have your email address (real or not) registered with? How many of them do remember the passwords? How many of them do you remember actually registering?

The fact that the band let users set a price for the music also encourages the perception that the price of music should be up to the buyer. If both BitTorrent and Radiohead offer the album for the same price, fans might see little difference between the two sources. In fact, Radiohead's move might even make BitTorrent look increasingly legitimate as a forum for picking up new music. Thus, assessing this as a "piracy versus free" issue isn't exactly right; once some users got the message that it was "free," it didn't matter where they got the album.

Garland agrees that the move "amplifies a long-standing" disconnect between the industry and the people who buy its products, and he points out that this is hardly the first time the issue has arisen. Downloaders have long claimed that "radio is free" and "I can make mixtapes" to defend the free downloading of music from P2P services. Despite the music business' attempt to counter these arguments, radio, mixes, and P2P all "feel like free" to many end users. This hurts the perception that they shouldn't torrent their music, and Radiohead's set-your-own-price model may encourage that feeling (as have record label attempts at using P2P services to promote certain songs; how does a user know if the song they're grabbing is illegal or not if even the labels use BitTorrent to offer free music?).

To Radiohead, there certainly is a difference between sources. The band wants people to use their sites, it wants to collect their information, and it likely wants to send them information about concerts and merchandise at some point down the line. But the band has learned the hard way that money isn't the only thing that matters to Radiohead fans.