Bands looking to copy Radiohead’s pricing optional music sales plan have a new option in NoiseTrade, which handles all the required back-end stuff that Radiohead handled in-house so that bands can concentrate on the important stuff, like recording songs and updating their web presences.
Bands who pay for the service get a widget they can embed anywhere HTML is used. Listeners who encounter the widget can use it to preview samples of the songs and download the entire album for the price of their choosing (including zero), or in return for by entering the verified e-mail addresses of three friends.
According to the company, each collected e-mail address is worth about $1 to a band in music, merchandise and ticket sales over the long term.
A NoiseTrade spokeswomam told us via e-mail that 5 percent of listeners are choose to pay for albums, while the rest have chosen the e-mail address route, adding that the average price paid for an album on the site is $3.97. Since the site launched on July 4, she says over 50,000 unique visitors have downloaded over 22,000 albums — not bad for the first two and a half weeks.
NoiseTrade cofounder Derek Webb apparently had the idea for thisservice in 2006 (well before Radiohead posted their pricing-optional In Rainbows album online in return for e-mail addresses), when he gave away one of his albums in exchange for names, email addresses and zip codes.
Unlike most other music widgets available to bands, NoiseTrade isnot free to use. Each widget costs an initial flat fee of $250, whichcovers the first 20,000 downloads of the album. Every subsequent 5,000 downloads costs $75. Once the widget is created, fans of the band canembed it wherever they want (in other words, you don’t need to be inthe band to post their widget).
Although NoiseTrade is designed for music, [Paste Magazine used the service](<div style="width:240px; height: 400px;"><object width="240" height="400"><param name="movie" value="http://static.noisetrade.com/w/NTWidget.swf?wid=69e71eef-6af7-417a-8151-05fc48d582df"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.noisetrade.com/w/NTWidget.swf?wid=69e71eef-6af7-417a-8151-05fc48d582df" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" width="240" height="400"></embed></object></div><img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/CIMP/bTxJmxPTEyMTY3NTczMDY5MjcmcHQ9MTIxNjc1NzMzMDk*MyZwPTE5MDI4MSZkPTY5ZTcxZWVmJTJENmFmNyUyRDQxN2ElMkQ4MTUxJTJEMDVmYzQ4ZDU4MmRmJm49Jmc9Mg==.jpg" />) to offer a year’s subscription at any price.
Here’s what Derek Webb’s own NoiseTrade band widget looks like:
