The average price paid was $6 on a globalized basis but Americans were more generous, coughing up $8.05 - factor in the freeloaders, however, and it’s more like an average $2.26 on a worldwide basis and $3.23 from Americans. The most common amount offered was below $4, but 12 percent were willing to pay between $8 and $12, around the typical cost of an album from iTunes. We could in fact be witnessing the ushering in of the era of User Generated Value.

Also of note, in an online exclusive, EMI/Parlophone and RadioHead are selling the full back catalog of RadioHead music on a 4Gb USB stick in CD -quality WAV files with digital artwork, and the stick is in the shape of the Radiohead bear. This will continue to be disruptive food for thought among the archaic leaders of the music industry.

Eh, believe it or not, I think some artists on major labels have been up to this for quite a while…

A Study: Soulja Boy and Web Marketing & Distribution, but Don’t Forget Radiohead:

A few years ago, 2002 to be exact, I predicted such a future when I spoke on a panel — “Black Music Technology” — at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting. The paper I presented, “Hip-Hop’s Transformers: Technologies of Production and Distribution in Hip-Hop,” was kind of all over the place. I had the technologies and production part down, but the distribution part was a little weak. The only example we had at the time was Chuck D, and it wasn’t very successful — not yet, especially because we hadn’t yet heard of “The Long Tail.” One of my panel members even told me she didn’t see that the Web would be a viable distribution channel any time soon. Perhaps it was just too early to tell.

In fact, Chuck D wrote in that very same year:

2002, the 15th year of PUBLIC ENEMY, expect some new records and some revamped old ones (or classics as they say) thru http://www.slamjamz.com, but most of all this year were gonna tour some exotic places, do music and have fun doin it. Stay tuned I’ll keep you posted, yup.

I could have put this post in a historical context and mentioned this as well here, and then I could have added Prince and his NPG Website and his efforts at digital distribution and record releases. It’s just that I was commenting on Jay Smooth’s video, which in and of itself is a cultural critique of recent developments in the entertainment industry.

BTW, Jay Smooth has not released an album. Jay Smooth is the guy in the video talking about why record labels should look closely at what Radiohead has done to control their own distribution and thus the fandom created around record releases. He primarly discusses why Jay-Z could have capitalized off of this strategy. Likewise, I throw in Saul Williams as an example of an independent who has also taken advantage of the ways in which music aficionados like to consume music nowadays.

Also Mega, I’m loving the UGV as a play on the value of user generated media that’s being bandied around the Internets a lot lately.