"Arrest this man, he talks in maths ..."

Much has been made of Radiohead’s latest business experiment. For those who haven’t kept up with the latest industry-destabilizing event, click here. If you are too lazy to link to another site, then here is the skinny: Enigmatic rock giants Radiohead snubbed the record industry and retailers by releasing their latest album, “In Rainbows,” on the Internet. Not only did they release the album directly on the Internet, Radiohead also allowed customers to name their own price. You could either pay nothing, or as in one case, pay a whole lot more. As if this affront to the record industry was not enough, the album is available in a DRM-free format. Download it, burn it to CD, put it in your ipod, burn 57 cds, share it ... the possibilities are endless.

Folks, I need the late pass. I know what you are thinking: “Vic, this story is old. Everybody has written and blogged the hell out of this. You need to put your J.D. to work and write about Britney’s custody battle or T.I.’s legal problems.” Well, that is not going to happen anytime soon. I really want to take a look at how Radiohead’s business move will or won’t change the game. Such an exercise requires a bit of temporal distance. No longer content with taking modern music to new and dizzying heights, Radiohead is now doing the same with how the record industry does business.

When I first read of this experiment, I was excited. No, you don’t understand I was really excited. I knew the music was going to be hotter than a twelve pack of Bud Light forgotten in the trunk of a car. What really got me going was the fact that you could name your own price. For an unemployed graduate student who just blew nearly every cent on a trip to Southeast Asia, this was welcomed news.

I don’t know about you all, but I pretty much stopped stealing music via the internet. Aside from fears of getting popped by some RIAA hit men (a.k.a. intellectual property lawyers), I really started feeling bad for the artist. What if I had spent time writing a brief for a client and then I found a website that offered the same work for free? What client in their right mind would pay me when you can get it for free?

So here comes Radiohead to save me from my newfound guilt. I could get new music for free and not feel guilty because it would not be stealing. Imagine going to the store and picking up something off the shelf and then having the option of paying or not paying for it. Whatever you do, it’s all good.

After trying to access the “In Rainbows” website for the better part of two days, I finally hit pay dirt. There I was, on the threshold of downloading a completely free (and legal) album. I don’t know what happened next, but a weird feeling came over me. I could not bring myself to type “0.00” in the £ box. The guilt came back in a tsunami-like wave. Was I really going to stiff the band that gave me so much? Could I be capable of such disrespect to a group of individuals that have written a considerable part of my life’s soundtrack? I am a law school graduate, but even I could not be that big of a jerk.

Then came the next equation in my twisted moral calculus: “How much?” There I was, feeling like a sack of crap for even considering taking the album for free. I thought, “Enough with the self-loathing Vic, how much are you going to cough up?” Emboldened and empowered, I set out to get my credit card. I don’t know what came over me, but at that moment I felt the need to check my bank account. The self-loathing returned when I saw my balance: “$13.86” I then opened my wallet and found a single ten spot. Bank account, plus wallet, equals $23.86. Awesome! Someone tell Carlos Slim he isn’t the only Mexican with money.

After some quick calculations, I thought that I would give Radiohead three bucks for the album. So what if your coffee this morning cost more than that? At the time, three bucks represented a whopping 12.5% of my total wealth. That number would climb up to 14.4% when you factored in the service charge. I know it wasn’t much (probably didn’t cover the cost per album), but it was something. I felt really good knowing that I contributed something. It is similar to the recipients of micro-finance loans. The loan is small and terms of repayment are also small, but the people take pride in paying the debt. I might not have paid a whole lot for the album, but I feel good about what I did pay. I call this the “micro-purchasing of music” theory. Remember folks, you heard it here first.

Will this new way of selling music take hold? I think so. Radiohead has cornered the market thoughtful and guilty consumers like me. Will it be profitable? Sure, but probably not for Radiohead. There is a price to pay for being a maverick. While I think Radiohead got a good response on their website, some potential customers had trouble logging on to the site. This had the effect of leading people back to Bit Torrent and other file sharing sites.

Whether in business or in music, Thom Yorke and company have always been a strong member of the avant-garde. People may not comprehend the music or the concept of a free album, but once Radiohead acts, people cannot help but to emulate. Observers of music and intellectual property stay tuned. In two or three years when artists release albums directly on the net with an open pricing scheme and are profitable at doing so, don’t credit the MBA or the bean counter who optimized this business model. Just remember that Radiohead, was and will always be, the “jigsaw falling into place.”