Go on, do like Radiohead
By Yeoh Siew Hoon
Last week I downloaded Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” and even though I could have done it for free, I typed in £1.00. With taxes, I ended up paying £1.45.
Now you could either call me cheap or stupid but as I actually thought I was paying for only one song and instead got an entire album, I ended up feeling extremely guilty.
“Oh my God, these poor musicians,” I thought. “I ripped them off.”
Worse is, I even forwarded it to a friend who promptly downloaded it for herself.
I now feel so guilty that I will buy their Discbox which will cost £40.
Radiohead’s move to put their new album “In Rainbows” on the Internet and let fans decide on the price is, to me, inspired – a marketing stroke of genius.
The demand was so huge their server crashed on October 1, and that from a quiet website announcement which spread like wildfire on the web. All the screen says is, “Radiohead have made a record. So far, it is only available from this website. You can pre-order it in these formats: Discbox and Download.”
There is a function that, after you type in a wrong number in the price box, prompts you: “It’s up to you.” And then again, “No really, it’s up to you.”
It is putting the customer in ultimate control – to decide the price they are willing to part with for a product they desire.
And I started thinking about its application to the travel world. Singapore Airlines did it in a manner, I suppose, with the auction of its first flight on the A380 but that was one-off and for a charity. One can be benevolent in spurts.
But what if a hotel decided to put its full inventory on the web for a period of say three months or even a year or heck, forever, and let the customer decide the price they wish to pay? Or an airline?
After all, everyone’s always saying, the customer is king. Well, if he is, then why not make him that not just for a day or the duration of his stay but his entire lifetime?
I can see this working with strong, individual, independent brands who have a manic, passionate fan base – customers who are loyal beyond reason.
Radiohead had that working for it – it had not made an album in years, it had road-tested the songs, it has a manic following and its indie credibility just shot up several notches with this move.
According to a British survey, about a third of the first million or so who went into the site after the announcement paid nothing but many paid more than US$20. The average price was about $8.
Like me, people were prepared to pay for something they could get for free.
Perhaps I grew up with the belief that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or that I should pay something for a creative piece of work. Or that I felt a sense of simpatico for artists who want to stick it into the big, bad corporate world. Or that I was casting a vote for all of music-kind.
Whatever it was, for that moment, I felt totally in charge.
And that is a feeling no amount of money can buy.
Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe
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