Comment to McCollum: It goes without saying that what Radiohead has done with this experiment is truly revolutionary. Furthermore it is nice to see that Radiohead is making some profit, despite the fact that it is much less than what many people expected. One must keep in mind, however, that it has not even been one month since the album was originally released to consumers. Greg Sandoval, an author for CNET's News Blog points out in this article that it is probably much too early to determine whether or not Radiohead has been successful (monetarily speaking) in its endeavors. Sandoval quotes Chris Castle, (scroll down to see biography), a long-time music attorney and record executive for A&M Records, with the statement that "the money-generating lifespan of an album can last as long as two years. It starts when an act releases a record and continues when the performer goes on a concert tour." Traditionally, performers have released albums and then immediately afterwards toured to support the sales of their album. As Mark Ellen, editor of "The Word" magazine and music journalist, points out in this article, "[f]ive years ago people toured in order to sell records." With this in mind, Radiohead's limited success can be partially attributed to the lack of live performances this far into the experiment. Not only this, increased touring will undoubtedly lead to greater revenue generated by the sale of tickets, as well as the sale of physical merchandise and other paraphernalia that consumers cannot simply download for free. Therefore, your suggestion that people should find a more effective business model is premature. With the addition of touring, some marketing and promotion by the band, and simply time in general, the figures might change drastically, turning this experiment into a highly effective business model.
Comment to Linder: It is ironic how Digidesign releases the Mbox Micro as well as Pro Tools version 7.4 immediately before the big holiday season is it not? At first glance the Mbox Micro does seem really cool (see image), but as you pointed out, it is not - technically speaking - an audio interface as it provides no audio input to the computer. This is a drawback for true audiophiles who would like a small interface for recording "on the go". Yet it also makes sense that a true interface with
a decent preamp and analog to digital converter would be significantly more bulky, diminishing the Micro's novelty miniature size. That aside, I might even consider purchasing the Micro for "on the go" mixing, but I feel that purchasing another $250 copy of Pro Tools LE software is a waste of time because I already own a copy. It might be more beneficial to Digidesign to offer the Micro at full price with the software bundle, as well as at a reduced price without the software for those of us who already have the latest version. You do bring up a good point, however, that as the number of high quality, hand-held flash recording devices increases, people interested in home recording are going to be doing less and less multi-track recording sessions, and therefore using Pro Tools as purely a platform for mixing imported audio files. The question then is whether or not the microphones in these hand-held devices can produce audio that is comparable to the traditional microphone and preamp combination. If so, then this could be the death of the large, multi-track audio interface market.
