Pay what you want. They did.

On 1 October 2007, with ten days notice, Radiohead announced In Rainbows would be available as a digital download for whatever the buyer chose to pay, including zero. The band were out of their EMI contract. The decision was theirs.

Roughly 1.2 million people downloaded the album in the first week. Industry analysts and the band themselves have offered a range of average-price figures since, between three and six pounds. Even at the low end of that range, In Rainbows out-earned the digital revenue of any prior Radiohead release within weeks.

The cultural lesson was clearer than the financial one. Given the chance to pay nothing, a large fraction of the audience paid something. People do not refuse to pay for music. People refuse to pay when the channel signals that paying is optional in the other direction, that the music is the bonus and the subscription is the product.

Pay-what-you-want is not the answer for every release. The answer it points toward is bigger. Audiences will pay when the channel is built for paying and the artist is the one setting the terms.