Radiohead

 What Price for

 Download?

According to a poll conducted by United Kingdom music magazine NME, the average fan appears to be willing to pay $10 for a digital copy. Now, that may not sound like a blow out. It's the going price for most records on Apple's iTunes. And that price, in turn, looks to be about right for a digitally downloaded album.

Consider the economics of the average CD. It retails for about $16 and costs about $6.40 to manufacture, distribute and sell in a store, research outfit Almighty Institute of Music Retail says. These costs are essentially zero when music is sold online. That's why iTunes can charge roughly $10 for a downloaded album.

Radiohead's fitter, happier approach slices out even more cost. The band pulled the ripcord on EMI, so it doesn't have to share profits or help pay the label's overhead. As a well-known band it's also able to take the knives out on marketing and promotion costs, cutting these by as much as two-thirds. Subtract these expenses and Radiohead may be able to distribute an album for as little as $3.40 a copy.

Now, fans may be delighted to pay $10 because they think the album is so good and Radiohead deserves the extra cash. But Radiohead prides itself on its anticorporate and anti-materialistic ethos. To avoid letting down fans, it might be more productive to adopt a no-surprises policy and fix a simple, fair charge for its record.