Because I run a Gothic and Industrial internet radio station, I get regular mailings and promos from a variety of labels and other sources, including the artists, themselves. A few days ago, my inbox contained an email from beatwire.com with the subject, “Austin label announces “pay what you want” for Mp3s”. I figured I’d save it to read later and I tagged it “important” and moved on.

We all heard about when Radiohead decided to let fans pick their own price for their new album, In Rainbows. When that happened in October of last year, it created a huge buzz and shook the music industry. Many even speculated that this could be the shape of things to come. Those speculators may have been on to something.

Texas Music Forge makes their own rainbows
Today, I was reminded to look back at that email from BeatWire, a music industry press release distributor. The email was about Texas record label, Texas Music Forge’s decision to allow the consumer to choose what to pay for an MP3 purchase from the relatively new label, and said, in part:

AUSTIN, TEXAS–March 12, 2008–Austin, Texas-based publisher and record label Texas Music Forge announced today that it has begun a “pay what you want” policy for its mp3 downloads. The concept of allowing customers to download music and set their own price for it has been a topic of intense controversy in the music industry.

TMF really just opened up their mp3s for download and threw a PayPal “donate” button on the page, but how they are doing it isn’t what’s important. The important part is that they decided to grab on with both hands to the concept of giving the consumer the power to decide how much to pay for music. They’re not the only ones putting music in our ipods while keeping cash in our wallets, either.

Trent toes the free music waters
Fellow blogger, Malin recently wrote about Industrial staple Nine Inch Nails‘ move to make their new album, Ghosts, available for only five bucks. With a huge following, NIN has no real need to lower album prices, but why not when you can afford to. Trent Reznor has always had his game face on when it comes to leading the industry and marketing himself and NIN, so this is really no surprise to me. I’m actually a little shocked that more artists haven’t leaned toward the consumer in an effort to attract more people back to actually BUYING music.

The future of music online
The before YouTube choked all the bandwidth out of the internet, there was mp3.com, which CNET bought and all but ruined (but that’s for another article). Mp3.com opened the flood gates for new and unknown artists to get a lot of exposure very easily by just producing good music. It also gave them a platform through which to sell digital copies of their music. Then we saw the birth of iTunes and the 400 companies that have tried to unseat it. I have a feeling that the next progression for music online is individual artists and labels all stepping up to the plate to offer very cheap or donation-based digital album downloads until such a practice becomes nearly mandatory to compete in the industry.